Teller of Truths

Facebook and Politics

2011-06-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

Open Letter:

If you are my friend, we are going to end up talking about politics. This is not something that can be said any other way, realistically. If we don't talk about politics, you aren't actually my friend in the same way that if you had a kid and never talked about it you wouldn't be my friend. If you spent a lot of time looking at X thing, reading about it, keeping abreast of it, thinking about it and you never talked about it to me I would probably assume that I am not your friend. Doesn't matter if that thing is porn or religion, I would assume you weren't my friend.

This is because if I consider you to be a "friend" that would mean at the very least that I care about you, so I care about the things that make you excited. I don't care about baseball in the slightest- I can still tell you how that the Cubs are currently in a 7 game losing streak. I don't care about Aflac insurance in the least but I can still tell you that it was originally set up to be supplementary cancer insurance.

If I am not your friend, we can still be colleagues, coworkers, acquaintances, mutual club-goers, and family. We can not talk about this aspect of my life and we can not know each other at all, but the weather will sure be exhausted (provided we don't mention climate change). Happy Birthday's can be wished, congratulations will be given, and condolences will be offered. But you aren't my friend- you're some person I know (and not that well) and all of our interaction will be superficial.

So, if you're mad that I talk about politics, unfriend me, or block me. But don't pretend we have a relationship we don't.

Relationships

2011-03-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hubby and I have been legally married for three years, one month, and 5 days today. Our actual anniversary past without notice; we're both pretty terrible at remembering the actual day- I had to go dig up the marriage certificate to even remember it precisely- and we both celebrate our anniversary on the day we threw the wedding party*.

I casually mentioned this to a friend the other day, and she asked the question that I always feel uncomfortable when I get it: "How do you guys have such a good relationship?". The only I answer I can give seems to be really unsatisfying to most people, because all I can think of is "Dumb fucking luck". A series of events that had nothing to do with searching for our true love meant we ended up running in the same circle of nerds at UND, and we eventually met. We met during a period where we were both in a position to be dating. That's how we ended up together.

I don't believe in "true love". In a world where you have a population of 6.9 billion people, it is unlikely that there is only one person on the entire planet that has the right combination of personality traits, pheromones, language, and background traits that you could be happy, comfortable, and content with. The sheer number of people who meet their life-partner at: work, school, or through mutual friends means that most "The One" is probably "the one we see a lot". But, even though I believe that there are a number of people I could have happily pursued a life-long relationship with, I do feel like Hubby and I are probably the best of all possible worlds to be together. Everyone says relationships take hard work. Our relationship is the easiest, laziest thing on the planet.

That being said, if I have to impart great wisdom on why our relationship works so well, so people can sift through it and see if there is any advice to be gleaned to make their relationships work/ so they can find a way to find a life-partner, it would be this:

1) Have a life outside of your significant other, or prospective significant other.

When Hubby and I were dating, we were both in college. We both had jobs. We had our own circle of friends, though there was plenty of overlap. We both had hobbies. We both respected that each one liked their alone time. We understood that our friends, ambitions, and family were in fact priorities, and sometimes that meant saying "I'd like to go to the movie with you, but I haven't spent enough time with Grunt for awhile, and I'd like to hang out with him instead." We continue to this day to have aspects of our lives that are separate. This not only means that you won't overdose on one another, but it also means that they are not the only person doing emotional work in your life. That being said:

2) Either have common hobbies and friends, or make the effort to enjoy each other's hobbies and friends.

Hubby and I were easy: not only were we from similar backgrounds**, but we already both enjoyed nerdy pursuits such as reading fantasy/ sci-fi and playing role-playing games. But, when there was an activity that we didn't share, we did our best to bridge it or at least respect it. I've picked up book series that he wanted me to read that I now enjoy fabulously and he has done likewise. We've both watched movies that we wouldn't have watched if not for the other person. This makes it so we never run out of things to talk about: we have shared frames of references for our conversations, and that makes things fun. I'm not saying that everything we've ever done or read for each other led to something we both enjoyed. For instance, I still think Magic: The Gathering is kind of a waste of time, and he still is baffled by the sheer amount of time I spend on political blogs, but we accept each others' loves and past-times and work to be able to at least follow the other person.

Similarly, we lucked out because our circle of friends already had some overlap***, but with the friends we didn't share, we made the effort to be sociable. I'm not saying we were bosom buddies with everyone's friends, but we did get to the point were we could all hang out and not have it be an awkward "My friends in one corner and his friends and another" sort of thing. The sharing of friends has so far required the second most work in the relationship****. The most work in the relationship has been due to number three:

3) Accept each others baggage and shortcomings

Early into Hubby's and my fledgling relationship, I went to the wedding of one of his dearest, closest, longest friend's wedding, whom also just happened to be his ex-girlfriend. There, as I saw him interact with his life-long friends, it struck me that they teased him a lot and made him do a lot of the grunt-work. This was particularly sensitive to me because I had plenty of "friends" in my life that were not friends at all. On the car trip home, he was bouncing and happily reliving the fun night of the wedding with me, and I mentioned, I thought gently, that his friends did not seem very nice to him. He got noticeably colder, and we spent an uncomfortable car trip back to Grand Forks. Unbeknown to me, his last girlfriend had tried to distance him from his friends and he was seriously sensitive to any suggestion that they were not good for each other. After a couple days, I went and asked him if I had did something wrong, and we mutually explained the situation to one another, and everything was fine.

In a parallel fashion, one day my sweet, happy-go-lucky then-boyfriend came home from a day working his terrible customer-service sales job*****. He had experienced an especially terrible day, and his ways of handling stress were all physical and currently unavailable to him. I did not know, at this time, that his major ways of handling stress were physical, just like he did not know, at the time, that I had come from an abusive household. So when he threw a chair across the room, I beat a hasty retreat out of the apartment, and swore never to come back. When he called me, he was instantly apologetic, and promised (and kept his promise) to never do anything like that when I was around.

I can be skitter-y around physical violence, and I'm not great at social interaction. He has a temper, and unique relationships with his friends and family. It is important to note that what YOU think is going to be your biggest flaw******, or the hardest thing to get over, may not be the thing that your possible life-partner finds the hardest thing to work with and get over. But, we both dealt with, and accepted that we weren't perfect, and did our best to be able to understand the other party. Speaking of which, this brings me to:

4) Be direct and honest with the other person. Also, accept that the other person is not always going to communicate perfectly to you.

This is the hardest piece of information to impart, because I think that this is going to be the least useful to people. A lot of people have been trained not to be direct, and being direct can be really tricky because it's easy to step into "so blunt you are rude". Also, people use the "but you didn't SAY anything" to ignore other people's facial expressions and body language, which is a crucial aspect of communication. But I really do think that this is one of the reasons our relationships worked, and continues to work, so well. After I was upfront with Hubby, he felt comfortable enough to be upfront with me, and we accept that direct communication is going to work better than trying to be subtle ever will. When we hit barriers in our relationship, like inadvertently tripping each other's baggage, it has followed a fairly similar pattern: back away until the tripped person feels safe (sometimes, that's a second, sometimes, that's a couple days depending on the situation), the tripper realizes that s/he did something and asks for clarification of the problem, and the tripped person explains why s/he is hurt by previous statement/behavior. Tripper then apologizes, we clarify the problem as much as humanly possible, and go on our merry way.

This is harder than it sounds sometimes. Because sometimes that stuff that is baggage for you is just flipping weird. The "dissing your friends" and "hurling furniture" stories are pretty straightforward, and fairly easy to see who was at fault and which behavior needed to be altered. But there are some things that you are just going to have to eventually own up to, and it'll be awkward. And you'll want to hide it, because, especially in new relationships, you want to come across as normal and well-adjusted, even though what you're trying to find is the person who will like you because of your weird little peccadilloes.

For example, I really hate pasta, but I really like meatballs. So, one time, Hubby was going to treat me to a meal he made his very own self. Unfortunately, when he said he was going to make "Spaghetti and meatballs" and all I heard was "meatballs" so I was super enthusiastic. Then the day arrived, and Hubby had done up his shitty university apartment in the nicest tablecloths the dollar store had to offer, candles, and cleaned until the grime sparkled. The pasta was simmering on the stove top, and the smell of garlic bread and bubbling spaghetti sauce was heavenly. Unfortunately, what there wasn't was meatballs. I didn't want to be mean, so I did my best to suck down spaghetti even though I hated it. He noticed that I wasn't eating, and when I give my standard picky-eater excuse- "I'm just not that hungry"- he interpreted that as "I didn't think you'd be a very good cook so I ate before I came here". Rather than spinning this out in hilarious sitcom fashion, I owned up about not liking spaghetti, much to his consternation. He asked "If you didn't like spaghetti, why did you act so excited to come over?" and I responded "Well, when I said I liked spaghetti and meatballs what I really meant was 'I like meatballs'". This is still an inside joke in our relationship.

Also, sometimes communication can not exactly get the intended point across. For instance, we were once having a lovely school cafeteria dinner of something that was probably food with a couple of friends. Hubby was madly trying to kill the meat for his meal, so not listening to the conversation around him, which, at the time, was talking about the "obesity crisis". After he defeats his meal, he takes that moment to celebrate by poking me in my stomach and going "Hehe, squish. I love you" right as I was saying "BMI measurement is a total joke. By that measurement, I'm obese". This of course led to the temperature going down several degrees as I turned to him and had a look like "Explain yourself immediately or death shall rain down on you" as our friends ducked behind their trays. Upon seeing the confused look on his face, I immediately ratcheted back the haterade, and everyone had a good laugh at the story. I forgave the inadvertent communication that I was obese, and the minimization of the discussion. This to is an inside joke in our relationship.

5) Have inside jokes.

This is terribly important. This is so wickedly important that I don't know if I'd be able to have a relationship with my Hubby unless we had inside jokes. Inside jokes take the sting out of horrible experiences. They help keep a sense of perspective when we're creeping towards the "Minor annoyances are building up to the point where we're going to have a fight due to crankiness". They allow you to bond by being the only two people in a theater laughing when no one else gets the joke. They overcome distance when you are tired and you have to talk to each other on the phone because you want to at least touch base with one another but know that the telephone is not going to be as good as being in the same room. Inside jokes are how we demonstrate love, the comfortable little niche and reminder of happy times past and happy times to come.

6) Be partners in crime

"Crime" in this case does't mean "breaking the law" but it does mean, that whatever you do, do it with each other's support if you don't do it together. When we go to Cons, we commit cos-play together. When we lie to family about reasons why we can't attend the super exciting Easter dinner for more than an hour, we back each other up. When one of us wants to go out for a night of drinking with the friends, we tell each other to have a drink for the one staying in. I'm not my husband's mother, and he isn't my father (eww, relationship dynamics like that freak me the hell out). Ergo, it is not my responsibility to clean up after him, and it is not his responsibility to "protect" me. I'm not his jailer, I'm not his ball-and-chain, he's not my savior, he's not a child.

This isn't just "be mutually respectful" though that is part of it. We perpetrate weirdness and geekiness a lot, and we are totally aiding abetting when we do it. Your life-partner shouldn't just tolerate who you are, shouldn't just accept it, they should full on embrace it. Of course there's going to be aspects that you'll just have to tolerate or accept, but the bulk of it, the whole that makes up what they are should be endorsed. You should be the biggest fan of his/hers and vice versa. You should love them, feel loved, and you should love who you are around them.

7) Be a safe place for them. Be the place that they can go to when things just suck (and things will just suck sometimes).

You should be the person that your life-partner always feels safe talking to. S/he should be the person you always feel like you can go to when things are rough. Now, I want to make it very clear here: your life-partner should not be the ONLY person you can talk to. That level of emotional work is exhausting. But, you should be a safe harbor in the world, and hopefully that's not too cheesy of an analogy. When the other person wants to rant, give him/her space to rant. Yes, it does in fact suck to worry about the fact we are never going to pay off the black hole of debt. Yes, it does suck that my Hubby is gone all the time. Yes, the winter in fact does make thing suck. It sucks, but I'm glad I'm here for him, and he's here for me.

8) Try to focus on the good things as much as possible.

Do not interpret this as "be shiny happy falsely bubbly people all the time, omg!". For one, that contradicts the whole "accept that things will just suck sometimes" and for two, that's cheap, dishonest, and ultimately hurts yourself and your partner. But, as much as you can, focus on the positive. In our case, it's going "Even though we live in a shitty basement apartment with bipolar heat and constantly breaking down crappy things, we have to admit we have decorated this place to represent how awesome we are and we're still doing pretty damn awesome to live in a safe place with electricity and civilization". I don't know if this directly relates to having a good relationship, or if this is just a really good way to feel pretty zen about your life and that translates into having a better relationship, but it seems pretty important in our relationship.

9) Grand gestures are fabulous, but nothing beats day-to-day stuff and small tokens.

There are really only 4 chores that get done in our household with an sort of consistency: dishes, laundry, garbage, and catbox. I do the laundry, Hubby does the dishes, and the garbage and catbox are for whoever notices it needs to be done. Hubby always does the dishes. He doesn't complain about it. He doesn't need me to nag him to do it. He doesn't roll his eyes and act like it's the most Herculean task in the world. He is therefore better than any sitcom I've ever seen and more than half of my roommates.

We also like to send little notes and text messages to each other for no reason. These little touches let each other know we still care. Coming home with a small thing that we saw at the store and thought "I bet s/he'd love this". Turning around and out of the blue saying "I love you, you know that". Snuggle attacks. Hugs. All of those add up to a really fun relationship.

10) You don't have to get married. But if you get married, or if you decide you want to live together, do it with your eyes open.

Hubby and I basically got married for the legal benefits. We stay together out of love, but the decision to join our life together had to do with a lot of really boring things. That's why we went to counselling before we decided to do anything too drastic. I highly, highly recommend making sure that you at least know about these things before you get to be super serious:

A) Religious beliefs: Are you religious? Are your religions compatible? Are you an Easter and Christmas Christian or a three-day a week person (or Hannakah and Yom Kippur Jew or do you require that you keep full Kosher, or whatever religious belief you hold to and how strongly). If you're nonreligious, do your philosophies match up enough?

B) Political beliefs. This strongly relate to religion and philosophy, but you can be surprised. An apathetic Democrat and an apathetic Republican can work pretty well, or if you think politics is just a game and the important thing is who wins, you might be able to swing it (Hi Carville and Matlin!). But I've never seen a fire-breathing conservative and a dyed-in-the-wool progressive have an emotional relationship work. Politics is important- if it's more than just pulling a lever in November it'll color your entire world-view.

C)How do you handle money? Do you think debt is make-believe money, or does the thought of being in debt send you into a cold sweat? Is a new car and investment or a luxury? What are the predictions as far as making money goes? Will you be okay if the other partner makes more money than you? How are you going to split up bank accounts? Are pre-nups just business savy or are they a deep-seated sign of distrust? What debts do you have?

D) What are your sexual preferences? This goes just beyond gay/straight (you should probably have figured that out in the dating period) but what about things like polygamy and monogamy? Bisexual? Is there going to be a safe list of people you can sleep with? Are you going to be able to accept the other's sexual history? Does one think reverse missionary is kinky while the other is pulling out the gimp mask and handcuffs? Does one have a raging libido while the other is a blue moon sort? Are you asexual?

E) Do you intend to have kids? At what point in your life do you want kids? How many kids do you intend to have? What sort of birth control procedures are you going to use to have that happen? What will you do if they fail? Do you want to foster?

F) How are you going to live? City, suburb, exurb, or rural? House or apartment? How many hours a day do you expect your other person to work? How is the housework going to be divided up? To what standards of cleanliness do you expect there to be?

G) Who's going to cook? What are your expectations for kinds of food? Exotic? Vegan? Frozen dinners?

H) Do you intend to travel? Travel together? Is this something you think is important enough to budget, and what do you budget it over?

These are the most boring things you can think to discuss, made all the worse because sometimes in the context of discussing it you realize you never even thought about someone disagreeing with you. But I've found, after observing a number of my friends and families relationships, that we cut off about a billion different arguments because we already knew the answer. The lack of surprise meant that we weren't talking about it when it was happening, while emotions were high, but before it happened and it was theoretical and dispassionate. We have also avoided these fights because we haven't run into some of the problems (no unplanned pregnancies, yay!), but it has helped when ran into a couple of barriers.

I don't know if this is helpful for anyone, or if it's just so blatantly obvious that everyone else is already following it, but there it is. That's how come we work so well together- these ten things and dumb fucking luck.

*International Talk Like a Pirate Day is WAY easier to remember.
**Both raised in a Midwestern cultural tradition, both from "traditional" families with one female mom and one male dad who were married and never divorced, both had a mom in medicine and both dad's had been in the military, both had two siblings and were the oldest, both raised Lutheran~, I could seriously go on for a long while here.
~I was Lutheran until my mother went of the rails and we went from a fairly mainstream church to "Harry Potter book burning/ speaking in tongues crazy" church.
***UND is a school of about 14,000 students. The culture revolves heavily around drinking, sports, and religious-based clubs. If you don't like these things, your separation factor drops from "5" to like "3" at most. Nerds are a small subculture: we were going to have the same friends.
****IE not that much.
*****Aggravated by the fact that Hubby is terrible at customer service jobs. He does not like to be treated disrespectfully, and cannot chew people out at work.
****** I think my biggest flaw is that I can't read minds. I would so be able to effortlessly deal with any and all social situations if I had that ability, not to mention be able to be an awesome superhero with that power instead of one of the most useless human beings on the planet. Hubby thinks my biggest flaw is that I lack esteem in my abilities.

A Glamorous Day in the Glamorous Life of a Flight Attendant

2009-12-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is a post by my friend, who flies for a regional airline. I was inspired to post this after this thread where people were actually debating whether or not it's okay to treat flight attendants poorly

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, as late as I possibly could to get to work by 5:45am. It's only an 18 minute drive to the airport, but I need to leave 45 minutes to an hour before my report time, so that I can park in the farthest-away terminal and wait for the light rail to take me to the main terminal, then go through security, which includes taking out my computer, taking off my shoes and many layers of clothing (as this is Minnesota in dead winter) and then shoving them all with my bags into the x-ray machine, and then packing them up and re-robing on the other side. I didn't shower or put on my make-up because I wasn't actually expecting to fly (which I will explain in a minute), so I just allowed for the barebones time it takes to convince myself to get out of bed, brush my teeth, take my pills, and pack my overnight bags in my car. I take one suitcase with overnight supplies and one very heavy tote bag with my required Flight Attendant Manual (which takes up most of the room), paperwork, corkscrew, various emergency supplies like a needle and thread and clear nail polish that doesn't really stop a run in nylons, though I keep it in hopes that if I believe hard enough, someday it will. I could make life marginally easier on myself by not toting my enormous laptop with me everywhere, but after getting stuck for 8 hours in Rhinelander, Wisconsin on a maintenance delay with absolutely NOTHING to do, I vowed to never risk wasting my life in total brain-melting boredom again. I do bring books, but I burn through them fairly quickly, and 3 books takes up about as much room as the computer and they don't give you the capability to check your email, or write, or watch the Daily Show in your hotel room later. So the computer is cumbersome, but a lifestyle choice I have chosen to sacrifice a little convenience for.

I brought computer with the intent of using it most of the day today. The beauty of the 5:45am shift this morning is that it rarely requires much work. It was an isolated day of "ready reserve," meaning I show up in the blue monkey suit and wait in the crew room until they call me for a flight. I'm an operational spare, as it were, only called if another flight attendant calls in sick at the last minute, or an aircraft and its crew get stuck somewhere and are not available to fly their next scheduled flight. Much of the time, you can be on ready reserve and not get called at all, or be called for some ridiculous 17 minute flight to St. Cloud and back. Or, as was the case today, be dead-headed out to Watertown, SD, and then just have to work the 42 minute flight back (dead-heading is when you are flown somewhere by the company for work purposes but sitting as a passenger). Many people despise ready reserve; they can't stand being called to work to sit around and wait, but I secretly enjoy it. I love that I am being paid to look nice (most of the time) and read a book. Granted, it's not much pay. Though we have to be at the airport a full 9 hours, we get paid for 3 hours 45 minutes. (A little known fact to the travelling public is how exactly flight attendant [and pilot] pay is calculated. Though it sounds like we make quite a bit if you look at the hourly wage, those "hours" are only flight hours. So in a 14 hour work day [which is legal - up to 15 for "operational necessity" and 16 with your permission], you might only actually be paid for 4 or 5, at the most 7. The typical schedule for a MONTH is 75 to 80 hours. Your typical 40-hour work week job gives you at least twice that in a month. It's kind of a screwy system to not be paid for the hours you are away from home, but no one can quite protest enough to get a change because, well, you could be getting paid almost 4 hours of work for 9 hours of reading - or sleeping.) Possibly the most redeeming quality of the o-dark-thirty reserve day is that you get to spend some of it sleeping, as long as you have your phone on you and don't mind a shrill awakening. (Some people can just put their phones on vibrate and wake up to it, but I am more likely to just fold it into a dream as some very small and passionate cat. So I opt instead for the shrill noise of the ring and just bear the slight shame of waking everyone else in the room up with me).

So I slept a good portion of the morning and was shrilly awakened (of course) by Crew Scheduling calling to let me know I had a flight out at 10:10. I would be on the flight going to Aberdeen, SD which was making a previously unscheduled stop in Watertown to let me and my pilots off so that we could fly a previously broken and fixed airplane back to Minneapolis. Some chaos had erupted in whatever department is in charge of gate agents and gate signs, so there was a group of four of them conferring at the gate, trying to figure out who was supposed to be at what gate, and none of the gates had accurate information on them (this gate said we were going somewhere in Tennessee). I was the first one at the gate, and the gate agent printed my boarding pass (dead-heads need them, too) and scanned it in. Then he did something he technically shouldn't have: he opened the door to let me down to the aircraft. He shouldn't have done this because passengers are not allowed to be on the plane without the legal "minimum crew" (a big, important legal term in the airline industry), aka, the flight attendant working the flight. I blinked a few extra times and opened my eyes wide so he knew I didn't think this was normal, then asked, "Can you do that?" because I didn't know whether there was a flight attendant on the plane or not, and I had thought not. He nodded rather non-commitally and held the door open for me. I could either have refused the gesture and firmly planted my feet, or I could accept his under-the-table goodwill and get out of his hair to let him deal with the chaos more effectively. Jet bridges are not heated, so when I got to the plane and saw no flight attendant inside, I figured the security rule had been broken anyway, so it wasn't going to harm much by getting on the plane where it was warm. But Total Bitch Flight Attendant apparently disagreed. When she got on the plane, I said "hi" so as to minimize her shock at finding someone on what should have been an empty plane. She flipped her lid. I explained that it was really cold in the jet bridge so I didn't want to wait there, and she said, with no attempt to disguise her anger, "And you didn't want to wait by the gate either." Whoa, lady. I'm not some spoiled brat that just can't bear the sight of the public so I coerced the gate agent into sneaking me down. I backed up a bit and told her that the gate agent just wanted to expedite things, to which she fumed in the most passive aggressive trying-for-superior-but-a-little-too-pissed-to-pull-it-off voice, "And you obliged him." As if that was supposed to be some cunningly cutting remark putting me in my place. Well, duh I obliged him, or I wouldn't be sitting there.

I have this awkward habit of going totally silent when someone is blatantly rude to me. I think my parents did such a good job instilling the value of politeness and courtesy in me that I have a very difficult time processing something so completely opposite. I have to take a few seconds to think 1. "Did she really just say that? Because that seemed rude if she did, and people don't say rude things" and 2. "How do I respond to that?" The script of politeness has lines for both sides: please, thank you, I'm sorry, excuse me and so on, and even when the specific words are not written, the actors are at least headed in the same direction. Rudeness is throwing away the script and heading your own direction, leaving the other person to improvise in a show they aren't sure is a comedy or a drama. (I hate improv, by the way. I am so terrible at it that I can't even stand to watch it performed because I have a hyper-active sense of empathy and am putting myself in the actors' shoes, and the thought of it is too nerve-wracking. My stomach twists and I am on the edge of my seat, not with rapt attention, but nail biting fear that they will mess up, say something unfunny, and humiliate themselves). So I was totally silent, dumbstruck by her rudeness, wishing I could have said something satisfyingly petulant like, "Yeah" in a you-wanna-make-something-of-it? tone, but probably just giving her the impression that she had put me in my place and now I felt like the sneaky little dog who'd gotten into the garbage again that she inferred I was. She also threw out some angry sounding remarks about how they weren't supposed to stop in Watertown, and how she hated it when they did this, and that she hoped none of us (the two pilots had gotten on by that point) were offended by swearing, because this is just the kind of thing that brings it out in her. She was worried about offending us with her swearing (which she actually refrained from), but apparently not anything else she had said. Maybe she she is one of those self-righteous "I only speak the truth" types who say that to somehow justify saying mean things. As if the truth is never offensive.

The shrill cry of Crew Scheduling had never sounded more like an angel when they called just then, telling me that we would now be on a later flight at 11:50 (and consequently Total Bitch would get her flight direct to Aberdeen after all). So I trundled with my three bags (the two from before plus large purse) over to the next gate to wait for the flight, which was delayed by a half hour. I actually don't mind delays much, when they are not my last flight going home. It is maybe the one arena of life in which I have learned to employ a zen kind of peace, thinking only about the present and not worrying. I read books or take out my computer or eat food. Today I read Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, which is quite good, and makes me think I might actually be becoming one of those vampire-obsessed people I always thought were a little strange. I read on the flight over and through the planned 45 minute break we were supposed to have. And I continued to read through 4 of the 5 hours we actually had.

No one is a greater optimist than the Crew Scheduler, I have found. Our flight out to Watertown carried not only passengers and crew, but the airplane mechanic who was supposed to fix the plane that we would be taking back to Minneapolis. He was supposed to fix a circuit breaker or some such simple-sounding thing in 45 minutes, then we were to hop on the plane and go home, arriving at around the time my reserve shift would have ended if I hadn't been called. The pilots often roll their eyes when Crew Scheduling quotes a time that they have estimated repairs will be done, and then give their own timeframe like today's, "There's no way we'll be outta here in less than 2 hours." In my memory, the pilots have always been right. More than two hours later, the plane was fixed, but not so fixed that we could take passengers, just fixed enough to get it from the little outstation to Minneapolis, its home with lots of mechanic friends and sophisticated tools. So it was just me, the mechanic, and another crew catching a ride in the back, and the pilots in front. During the pre-flight engine tests, the plane always makes funny noises and the lights go on and off. I am so used to this that I hardly blink and have to remind myself that it might actually be normal to worry when passengers look at me with stricken faces as we are taxiing and they see a propeller suddenly stop and the lights go out. But this time the plane made what I thought was an unusual coffee maker noise (and there is no coffee maker on this plane). It could have been just that I was sitting in the back instead of the front, but then we stopped a few minutes later. The captain catching a ride in the back said, "I don't think I like this," and then we heard the pilot over the intercom with the dreaded words, "Sorry, folks, but...." Though the original problem was fixed, a new one had cropped up in its stead.

It was 4:00, and the last flight out of Watertown left at 4:10, and someone (a gate agent or pilot) had told me it was oversold. The crew dead-heading home saw their chance and nearly catapulted out of the plane to try to get on the flight. Thinking it unlikely (it was oversold!) and knowing that Crew Scheduling hates to separate crews (as in me and the two pilots assigned to this flight together), I didn't jump into action and follow them. They all got on the plane, and just before they shut the door on the plane that was leaving, the captain turned around to me and said, "You probably could have got on, too, did you call crew scheduling?" Helpful. But I didn't think "so much for crew loyalty" would have been helpful either. The airplane needed two pilots to fly it, but it didn't need a flight attendant if there were no passengers. So even though they don't generally break up a crew, they probably would have in this case to let me go home, as it was clear the sick plane wouldn't be flying any passengers until it got properly attended to in Minneapolis. If there was room of course, which I had been led to believe there wasn't.

So I hung out in the plane while we taxied and the pilots and the mechanic looked at blinking lights, listened to engines, and evaluated things. I tried to read my next book, but I hadn't had time to properly grieve for the end of the last one, having finished only an hour or so ago, and I couldn't get into it. I did have free reign over the snack and beverage cart, but unlimited pretzels, cookies, and peanuts kind of lose their excitement after months of them - even the Biscoff cookies. I've had to be creative to keep relying on them for sustenance - it was a great day when I realized I could actually stand the taste of pretzels if I ate them in a handful with the peanuts. It increased my number of snack options from 2 to 3. With only three ingredients, there aren't a lot of recipe options. I've even taken to putting peanuts on top of the Biscoffs (with limited success) just to have something a little different. Occasionally on our biggest plane (the one that has a first class with a meal service), someone won't want their breakfast bagel and there is an extra cream cheese and raspberry jam, which makes a Biscoff cookie almost like cheesecake. It is sad, but that is one of the more exciting things about my job.

The mechanic didn't know what was wrong with the airplane, which means it must be something really wrong. Or at least, something more than a couple of hours to fix. The pilots were going to time out if we didn't leave by 7pm - time out meaning that they wouldn't legally be able to fly because their duty day would have started over 15 hours earlier by the time they got back. So I, being the pro-active sort, called Crew Scheduling while the pilots were still discussing aircraft issues to tell them the news so they can make arrangements for us to stay in a hotel overnight. But Crew Scheduling hadn't heard anything from their official channels (Maintenance), and couldn't do anything until they did. I got the distinct impression she didn't believe me. I often get the impression that Crew Scheduling has a rather dismissive attitude toward flight attendants, and gives much more respect to pilots. I am not the only one who feels this way. I told the pilots I had phoned and added, "I don't think she believed me," and they just nodded as if to say, "You're probably right."

At 5:30, they phoned again and Crew Scheduling still hadn't heard anything. At 5:45, the ground personnel in Watertown noticed that the flight time had been changed, meaning Crew Scheduling officially knew now that something was going on. It was moved to 6:00. They were giving the mechanic 15 minutes to fix the plane. Eternal optimists. The captain called at 6 and explained to them that parts were going to be needed, and there was no way it could get fixed tonight because a plane would have to fly them out (which would take an hour at the least if parts were on a magical platter being delivered to the plane at that moment) and then they'd have to install them, and that would be long after 7pm when it finished. Crew Scheduling said they couldn't actually set up a room for us at the hotel until they had it from The Powers On High that it couldn't be fixed by then. So that meant that either the mechanics who were not yet on their way with parts, driving the 5 hour drive, had to show up and say conclusively through official channels that it couldn't be fixed in a timely fashion, or we had to just sit at the airport and wait until the pilots timed out and THEN they could get rooms for us. But they did change our departure time to 6:30.

Finally at 6:30 some magic must have happened, because the airport folks in Watertown (who were all working way past their shifts to babysit us) told us Crew Scheduling had made hotel arrangements and the van was on its way to pick us up. Too many minutes later, no van arrived. Turned out that Crew Scheduling had made arrangements for a crew in Waterloo, not Watertown. So some puzzled van driver in Iowa had been dispatched to pick up a crew that wouldn't show up. They sorted things out and eventually we got in the van to our hotel in Watertown. Now some places have the not-so-nice areas of town, but I suspect that Watertown may just be not-so-nice. Granted, I was seeing it in the dark, and we may have been coincidentally driving down the one road lined with casinos. But they weren't nice, Mystic Lake, Muckleshoot, fancy, go-there-for-the-buffet kind of casinos. They were dark, one-story longhouses with readerboards. We asked the driver if we could go to a drive-through or anywhere for dinner because we hadn't eaten since before our originally scheduled 10:10am flight (the Watertown airport had a vending machine but no restaurant. It is essentially a long room with benches, a counter, and an x-ray machine). There didn't seem to be anywhere as hip as a drive-through, but there was a Subway. In a gas station. So the driver kindly let us go in (I say this with no irony - they don't have to take us anywhere but the airport and back, and Subway is a "fast" food restaurant that takes a long time when 4 people have sandwiches made to order one by one) and we had gas station Subway for dinner.

All this was independent of the feather-ruffling that occurred as a result of me missing a fancy dessert date with friends, and a birthday party with more friends, and the fact that I will technically be working on my day off to deadhead home. And of course, the irony that this was the first reserve day that I'd had in over a year, and I only got it due a scheduling fluke that happened as a result of calling in sick earlier, and that I'd planned to not get called at all. And that I wasn't even used to flight attend a flight. Those are all unfortunate side effects that sometimes just happen, given the potential for the unplanned in this job.
But the day's narrative is a pretty true portrait of a pretty common day - an oh-so glamorous day in the oh-so-glamorous life of the flight attendant.

A World Without Golda Meir

2009-08-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is a story start I wrote some time ago. Since I[m not using this blog currently for anything else, thought I'd put this out to the void. Trigger warning for violence.

Three cameras saw them rape her. Two on each side of the North Square, and one on top of the store building. Three cameras saw her little pink hat bobbing on the way back from class, and saw two guys rip off the cute matching windbreaker ($10.99 set from the store she was raped in front of). And the cops responded, 30 minutes later, when the two guys ran into the store to steal from the cash register.

The outcry was deafening. The somnabulant public would accept a lot from the government, but a failure to protect a sweet-looking white girl from a nice family who was just coming back from her class, well that was too much. And didn't we give up privacy, all those cameras in public, for safety? Blood must be had, Something Must Be Done.

In order to appease a restless public, the government's response was swift: two men (whom looked nothing like the lily-white boys in their frat jackets on the video) plead guilty to the rape and were executed. Also, there would be a 10 o'clock curfew for every woman on the streets. Your wives and daughters were now safe. John Q. Public was hushed, and calmed. The pitiful squeak the few women (and even less men) made about it "not being a criminal activity to be female" and "those women with jobs" were ignored or quelled immediately.

I was one of those small voices. Of course, who would care what I thought of the plan; no one asked me when they decided to play the three cameras endlessly looped on network television either, my face and nipples fuzzed out as to not upset anyone's delicate sensibilities. I was the rape-girl; I had to be victimized over and over again, reliving the experience until it just became a fuzzy, white-and-gray mushy image on a screen.

And, then to be told it was my fault- if I would have been at home it wouldn't have happened. Those who didn't say it tacitly agreed with it when they didn't oppose the law. Rape just happens; all we can do is get our women out of the way. And if they have to be restrained...well, it's like seat belt laws. You have to be restrained for your own safety.

But the classes weren't moved; the night shifts stayed the same. You want to get ahead in the world? You have to go to school, you have to have a job.

So here I am; hair cut pixie short, and under a ball cap, dressed in a bulky leather jacket, shapeless pants, walking with the swagger of one who knows he owns the world. I am a criminal violating the law, after some criminals violated me.

It Feels Weird

2009-08-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

School is starting up again, I'm told, but not for me. This will be the first year since I was 5 that the end of August does not mean the beginning of another school year. The ebb and flow of school- break- school- summer has been broken for me; more so than taking a summer class or two ever did to break it. And I don't really know how to feel about that.

Currently, I feel adrift in the world. I don't have a career, I don't have any plans for one in the making, and now I don't even have the rituals I've had for my entire life to cling too. In a lot of ways, it feels like losing religion- what am I supposed to do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights now? Except, I hated church, and for most of the time, I really loved school.

It makes me a bit curious: if you follow the average college-track, you are in school for 16 years of your life. I wonder if most people, upon receiving their degree, feel odd about joining "the real world". Do they feel jarred when August rolls around, and they're just doing their job instead of gearing up to go to classes? Do they miss searching for books online to get that really great deal? The ritual of looking where your classes are going to be? I wonder.

Moving Day and Porn

2009-05-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I am moving out of Grand Forks, and heading to the big city! Well, no, not really- I'm actually just heading to Minneapolis/ St. Paul. But, bigger city at least :).

Over at Punkassblog, there's a great discussion going on about porn; who looks at it, the type consumed, and what it says for the feminist movement. Now, I'm a pretty sex-positive feminist: I look at porn, and I would never advocate for it to be banned, though I do think that misogynistic porn is still bad (wow, is that a simplistic analysis). But I wasn't always like this.

When packing up, you find weird things. One of the things I found was a planner from my senior year of high school, which I brought to college because I thought I would use the "quick fact sheet" in the front (FYI, I did not. You almost never use that stuff you learn in school, particularly in mathematics, unless that's what you go into.) And, I found in the back of it a conversation that I had with a friend of mine, that just so happened to be about porn.

A- "You wanna go to Minot tonight? Pleasure Palace here we come! You're 18 now, we have to go!"

Me- I have absolutely no desire to go to porno areas. I'll allow, but not participate. Besides, if I wanted to, I could get the real thing.

God, I was a snot. At this time in my life I was full on in my "saving myself for marriage, it's against God's will to pleasure myself", la la la, hypocritical bullshit. This was even more hypocritical when at this time in my life, I didn't believe a single word of it- god was no more real to me than the tooth fairy, but I wanted everyone to believe I was a good person, and the easiest way to do that was to be a "Good Christian Girl" (TM). I might have not masturbated, nor had sex, but my boyfriend and I had done everything but have sex. We would get all hot and heavy, and stop when I really wanted it, then congratulate myself on this restraint.

Possible TMI warning- but that vaunted virginity lasted about one year after this conversation. Guess I wasn't saving myself for marriage- I was saving myself for college.

Guest post

2009-02-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

Lisa KS, one of my fellow PABs, would also like to put her story up to the cold, calculating stare of the internet. So, without further ado: The Wall.

Look, said one of Joni's squadmates, elbowing her sharply in the ribs. Look at him! Joni looked, past the pointing finger to the object of its focus. At first she saw nothing out of the ordinary: a recruit, a noob by the looks of his half-mown skull and skeletal frame, standing just inside the mess hall entrance. He did look even sicker than usual—her attention sharpened as she realized what it was about him that gave that impression, and her squadmate hissed into her ear again—Ain't never seen anybody that white!

He was white. He was white as a bleached sheet, white as the moon—Joni watched him sidle over to the food line; he was elbowed aside and stepped back after a moment, then tried again. He was allowed to stay that time, but now that she was paying attention, Joni noticed that he was standing in line with vets. Not noobs. She didn't have to try to remember if she ever did that, fresh out of training; she hadn't. Like everyone else, she had stuck with her own cycle. That first group that had shoved him back out of line—her eyes tracked them farther up and found them—noobs. Probably his noobs.

It happened that way sometimes, that everybody in a cycle took a dislike to one in particular. It wasn't often—it hadn't happened in Joni's cycle, two years ago—and she had only heard of it happening once since, though it might've happened more; she didn't pay much attention to the noob cycles. The one she'd heard of hadn't made it out of training. Accidents happened.

He looked like a corpse shuffling along in a line with the living. Joni tried to concentrate on her food—she had a shift outside coming up—but her attention kept wandering back to him. He didn't sit with any noobs, either—which meant he couldn't sit with anybody, and he ate standing up, next to the disposals. A few other people did too; somebody was always running late or in a hurry for some other reason. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he finished up, dumped his tray and walked quickly out the door. Then she forgot about him.

* * * * *

Joni stood in formation with the rest of the squad, idly wondering what the day would bring—she was reasonably sure they wouldn't have to go outside again til next week at the earliest, and therefore didn't really care what assignment the squad pulled—when the platoon sergeant came striding into the briefing bay, the white noob of the day before trailing at his heels. Joni stared. The platoon sergeant rarely came to squad briefings. He certainly didn't escort noobs around the barracks. But there he was, and so was the noob.

He didn't leave them in suspense long. "Shut up," he advised, though the entire squad already had as soon as he'd entered, in unison as if slapped in its collective face. "This is Barkley. He's new. Treat him right." The platoon sergeant glanced down at his clipboard. "Johnson. He's yours. You're on garbage patrol. Take him with you, then get him settled down for the night."

He left. The noob walked over and stood gingerly at Joni's left shoulder. An explosive snort of laughter from in front of her woke her up sufficiently to wipe the horrified expression off her face and roughly settle the noob—Barkley—into proper position beside her. She didn't look at his face, but he was compliant enough; his uniform shirt, rough under her palms, felt like anyone else's. She stared straight ahead through the squad sergeant's arrival and assignments and token lecture on behavior, then motioned him to follow her with a jerk of her head. She was aware of the stares directed at her back and hated them, though she made a conscious effort not to hate the noob. It might not be his fault, the way his cycle obviously was about him, even his presence here. She preferred to reserve judgement.

Even if it killed her. She grimly ignored the catcalls and snickers as she marched the noob to her room; she'd known she was going to get a new roommate sooner than later, nobody ever got to keep a single for long.

His gear was strewn across her bed. She took a deep breath, turned, and met the noob's stare head-on. He was staring. She managed not to glare back. "That's the open bed," she said, civilly, and nodded at the unoccupied bunk a few feet away. He gathered up his belongings, neatly enough, and carried them over and began stowing them away. Joni gave up any pretense of doing anything else and just sat cross-legged on her mattress and watched.

He didn't look particularly weak, and at least he wasn't so hesitant now as he tucked his gear in the wall locker beside the bed. His bed. She swallowed a sigh. Best to get everything out in the open up front—"Barkley," she said. He turned, a little too quickly. His eyes were large and hazel-brown. His hair was hazel-brown too; lots of people had that color hair, that color eyes. It was just his skin, that dead white-on-white that drew the eye, that unsettled. "What's your problem?"

"What?" he said. The word was toneless, his face expressionless—not like a deliberate mask, just a shocked-numb one.

"Why are you here?"

He paused, inhaled. "I was assigned here—"

"Don't," said Joni conversationally. "I saw you in the mess hall yesterday." He flinched. "Why are you here?"

Something went out of him, maybe fight, maybe just fear; his shoulders sagged and he sat down heavily on his new bed. His eyes never left her face but the tension around them, and in his mouth, relaxed. "I guess it doesn't matter," he said. "I'm stuck here now. You can do what you want to me."

She didn't want to—it would probably scare him all over again—but she couldn't help quirking her mouth up at him. He was noob-skinny and noob-ignorant; she'd been out on the perimeter for over two years; there was no question who'd come out on top if they got into it—but still—"You're a foot taller than me," she remarked. "It'd look funny."

He clearly couldn't believe she was joking, even a little, so she stopped. He was still a very unknown quantity anyway; it'd be sick if she let her sense of humor get her hurt. "Talk," she said. "Why…are…you…here?"

"They were probably going to kill me," he said. He took a deep breath. "They—figured out I'm different. Not exactly how, but they hate it." Another deep breath. "I don't blame them."

I would, Joni thought. Her eyes narrowed. "Why not?"

Now he did look a little scared, though she thought he was trying not to show it. "I'm not from the inner city," he said finally.

Joni felt stupid. Of course he wasn't. A piece fell into place, one of the ways he had—
that careful way he had of speaking—they all had to speak properly, of course, around sergeants and officers, and Joni had adopted some of it as a matter of course because she didn't care enough to maintain the speech patterns of her birth. But he was being careful not to sound more proper than he had to.

"It isn't just that," Joni said—involuntarily; she had spoken her thoughts more aloud than she'd intended. He was very tense now, and still. "What else?"

"Nobody knows anything else."

Normally, she'd have dropped whatever line of questioning she was engaging in right there. People's business was their own past a certain point. But her self-preservation instincts were fully engaged now; he was her roomie and more, had been assigned to her specifically; they were going to be associated together now in the minds of everyone else, and damned if she was going to end up dead without knowing why. Or, more likely, find herself having to arrange an accident for someone else without knowing why. Instead, she shook her head, and forced her face into a hard, dangerous mask. It wasn't natural to her, but it was effective, she knew. "No," she said. "You'd best tell me." She took a chance. "This is your last stop, isn't it? On the one-way train to hell. This doesn't work out for you, nobody's going to care why."

She'd hit home; that was obvious. He stood up; so did she. He really was unusually tall, but so fine-boned it wasn't obvious without standing right next to him. She was only a few feet away from him now, but she didn't feel threatened. She felt like she could break him in half instead, and the feeling made her nauseous. "Maybe you'll kill me instead," he said.

She jerked back; she couldn't help it. "No," she said. "I won't. Not if whatever it is won't hurt or kill me first." What was wrong with him? A disease? They wouldn't have let him in the militia if he had something communicable—

"I'm not from the inner city," he said again, and then, "I'm not from the outer neighborhoods, either."

Joni stared at him. There was nowhere else to be from and be here.

"—I'm from the towers," he said. His tone was weirdly conversational.

"You're crazy!" It was horrible though, how the idea made sense, how it fit in with everything about him—

"No," he said. "Or yes, for coming here."

* * * * *

They pulled garbage patrol for the next two days, she and Barkley; he was docile and uncomplaining, although she was careful not to give him an unfair share of the work in either direction. Two or three times she had been tempted to push him into doing something really crappy—it was when she believed his astonishing assertion the most that she was seized with those sudden desires to order him to do something she knew he shouldn't be doing. Garbage patrol was one of the easiest jobs there was inside, but there were still a few parts that weren't really safe. Nobody gave noobs those parts; it was pointless cruelty, and for those who weren't adverse to pointless cruelty, it was a waste of future resources that might someday save their own hides. Still, a few times, she had felt like doing it. It took her a long way towards understanding why his cycle hadn't wanted him around. They obviously hadn't figured out his real secret—he really would have been dead already—but they'd sensed enough, smelled enough of it to hate him anyway.

Off-day rolled around and Joni dragged him out of the barracks and into the perimeter town for a break. He hadn't wanted to go, though he never came out and said so; it was just like tugging and cajoling at a reluctant rock. However, Joni had perfected the art of uncomprehending denseness herself years before and wasn't about to be outdone by an amateur. After kicking him into the changing closet with a set of civ clothes that were more boring than the most boring civ clothes she'd ever seen in her life, she changed herself and waited until he tentatively emerged and walked over to stand in front of her.

He looked like a sickly noob in boring civ clothes, and even whiter than usual. She sighed. "C'mon," she said. "Let's go."

"Joni," he said. She stopped moving toward the door, startled. He hadn't addressed her even as Johnson since the day they'd met. He must have overheard somebody else calling her that. "Joni, I don't want to go."

"Yeah, I figured that out." They stared at each other in silence. Finally, she said, "I do want to go out. I need to. I hate this room, sometimes."

Whatever else he was, he wasn't stupid. He had to know she couldn't just leave him there alone, not when they'd just been assigned together. Not if he didn't want to be a target all over again. She tried to read his face, his eyes, but still couldn't. It was enough, though, that he relaxed his stance and when she stepped toward the door again, he followed.

She didn't take him to where the squad usually hung out; she wasn't quite ready for that. There were a lot of places in the perimeter town to go, to drink, to just forget life for a little while—she took him to one of those, barely more than a hole with three walls and only half a roof; fairly packed already but she found an unoccupied corner and dialed up two beers from the tiny table dispenser. The music wasn't much more than a heavy beat with a periodic wail like a feral cat's. Joni liked it; it was ugly and mindless and soothing. Like the beer. She finished her first and ordered a second.

Barkley took small sips of his, steadily. She wasn't sure exactly when they started talking, except that it was sometime into her third beer. She thought he was on number two, though it was hard to tell at the rate he drank. She was a little high; maybe he was too. He was smiling occasionally now, and it made his face entirely different. Beautiful—if he'd been a girl, and not so eerily pale, he really would have been beautiful, with his fine and perfectly symmetrical features, full lips and big hazel eyes. She firmly pushed that observation away. That was trouble of the absolute last kind she needed.

Hours later it was his turn to steer her, back to the barracks. The corridors were mostly deserted, and the few people still in them were far too drunk to care what they looked like. Still, it struck her as extremely funny that their usual roles were reversed; she tried to explain that to him, in-between fits of the giggles, but he either didn't understand her or didn't find it as funny as she did.

Back in the room and sitting on their beds, cross-legged and facing each other—like two Buddhas she had seen once at a bazaar in the inner city. She smiled.

"How old are you?" he asked suddenly. She blinked hard at him, trying to steady her focus. He was blurred at the edges; it made him glow a little, like her initial fancy of him in the mess hall line, the first time she'd seen him.

"What?" she said, then focused on the question. "Oh. I don't know. They give you a birthday after your medical exam. You know." She peered at him across the few feet separating them, then remembered. It sobered her up a little. "I guess you do know yours, huh? They didn't have to give you one?"

Free Thread

2009-02-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

If you have anything you want to talk about, here's the place to do it. Meaning of life, god, whatever, let's use this comment thread.

My Mom Thinks I'm Talented, Surely You Will Too

2009-02-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

Hi all.

I know this is generally a political blog, but hey, it's mine so I can do what I want in it. I have been working lately on a fantasy story. I think I've finished the first chapter, and would like the editorial feedback of the void. (Note, Blogger apparently does not like Copy and Paste from Word, so the formatting is a little funky).

It was a dark and stormy night-

“-and WET! Skye, why are we out in the middle of this goddess-forsaken forest in the middle of the Dark One’s NIGHT?” whined a high-pitched voice that was strangely musical, like listening to the tinkling of bells, if those bells were annoyed and petulant.
“I think the better question, Della, is when are you going to realize that whining about our condition is not going to improve it any?” said a brisk, professional voice that was just this edge of annoyed. “Besides, Fluffy tells me that there’s a settlement not too far up ahead. We can rest there”.
“I can’t even FLY in this weather!” Della moaned. “Why can’t I ride on Fluffy’s head?”
“Because,” Skye explained with the degrading patience of one who has had to repeat herself “The last time you tried to do that, he tried to eat you.”
“Maybe I should do that anyway” Della mumbled. “It may smell like dog breathe, but I bet it’s dryer in his mouth”.
Fluffy snapped his tail at the little pixie riding on his back, who stuck out her tongue in response, a pointless endeavor since she was invisible.
“Stupid little pup, I have all the power of the universe at my finger tips, why I could-”
“Hush, oh-ye-who-complains” Skye commanded. “There’s a village right up there. We’ll spend the night at an inn”.
The community that Skye referred to was a group of houses that could barely be referred to as a “village”. A wooden wall, weathered and faded with loose boards ran around the length of the community, the barest protection against wolves and other wild beasts. A sleepy guard, who looked like he would let all of the underworld in if it meant he could get out of the rain and in front of a warm fire, did the barest of inspections on Skye’s face before opening the gate. The main road was wide enough for two horses to pass side by side, if the riders weren’t too wide, and currently was less a road and more of a muddy swimming hole. The houses, much like the gate, were weather-worn and faded, but unlike the gate well-maintained and white washed. Reddish-orange glows seeped out through the windows, promising warmth and comfort against the miserable grey rain and wind. There were very few people out during this weather, and the ones who were out were bent over against the wind, hurrying to get out of the weather again.
Skye took the supplies off of Fluffy, and slung them over her back, as Della, who was still invisible, flung open the inn door. The innkeeper saw the door open, and thinking the wind blew it open, went to go shut it. Once he was upon, the door, he looked up and saw Skye and her mount. “You can’t keep that here,” said the innkeeper with a note of panic. “I’d be afraid it’d eat the horses”.
Fluffy snorted at the innkeeper. Skye gave him a look that clearly communicated “Behave” and to the innkeeper said “No worries, he will keep to himself.” With another look, Fluffy bounded off towards the village gate, and into the woods beyond. “Innkeeper, I would like to rent a room for the night.”
The innkeeper sniffed “2 silver for the night, and that includes a breakfast in the morning”.
“And by “two silver”, you actually mean 2 bronze, right?” Skye said.
The innkeeper looked hard at Skye’s well-worn cloak, and her taut muscles clearly visible under her shirt, nearly translucent from the rain. “I mean 3 bronze for the night, and mind you don’t drip on my freshly washed floors”. With that he stormed back into the inn.
Skye walked in, shook the most of the water off her cloak at the door, and walked to the fireplace. In the dimly lit common room, one was capable of seeing her features more clearly. Her face, under the mud of the road, was a pearly white that seemed almost phosphorescent, and had the high cheek bones and angular features that were common among her people. Her pointed ears peeked out behind dark black hair, which was currently plastered against here head and strands were falling out of her waist-length braid. She wore a sturdy linen shirt, which was fraying a bit at the collar and wrists and had patches on the elbows, and dark black pants. Over the shirt was a deer-skin vest, bleached in some places from the sun, and dark brown where it was wet. If one was particularly observant (or looking for something to steal) one might notice the amber pendant that was on her chest, between her nearly non-existent breasts. If one was very observant, they would see a dagger hidden under her sleeves, strapped to her forearm. Slung across her back were a long-bow and a quiver of arrows.
The inn itself was crowded from travelers forced in from the rain. The smell of wet human musk was heavy in the air, and mingled with the smell of smoky pine wood and stale ale. The fire threw off a great deal of heat, but the warm light seemed to disappear shortly after leaving the fireplace, giving one the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck inside a jack-o-lantern. On such a hellish night, it was quiet, with no one interested in the music of a travelling bard or the antics of a story-teller. Low murmurs emanated from shadowy corners, almost unheard over the crackling of the fireplace and the clanking of mugs and sloshing of ale.
While Skye was warming herself by the fire, and quietly contemplating what the next day had to bring, Della was getting bored. Now, as a general rule, a pixie should not be bored, both as a positive and a normative statement. Pixies are easily distracted, and can find the flickering of fire or the sparkling of the stars entertaining for hours on end. Many believe this is because pixies are simple-minded creatures, but they would be dangerously wrong. Pixies say it is because they are penetrating the veil of the universe but aren’t going to tell and then stick out their tongues and float away; but generally it is good advice not to believe the word of a pixie. But when pixies do get bored, they generally decide to remedy this ennui by introducing chaos into the world.
This particular Pixie was not only bored, but offended at the innkeeper for his rudeness towards her friend, and looking to cause mischief. First, she decided that there was a special discount for pixies on honey mead (namely, free). After taking advantage of the discount, she went to look for a key to take or a book to misplace (as a nod to her gremlin brethren) but was instead distracted by the sound of voices from under the floor.
“That’s weird,” she thought, “floors don’t normally talk”. After a bit of investigating (and twenty minutes being distracted by candlelight flickering off a shinny kettle) she discovered a trap door, hidden under a rug.
“Hmm”, thought Della. “Hidden places, with hidden voices normally means hidden fun”. She fluttered down the stairs, unseen, into the dark room.
“Please sirs, my daughter is my life,” pleaded the self-same innkeeper that had, moments before, told Skye the price of the room. “She was taken from me, and the Duke will do nothing to get her back. I’m afraid that she’ll be sacrificed at the harvest moon, in three days time”.
“While I regret the loss of your daughter, I myself am on a far more important quest” intoned a voice. Della shivered involuntarily; the voice rasped like a dry quill across a death certificate. He was not speaking loudly, but his words still carried through the dark cellar. As Della flew around the corner, she saw three people talking with the innkeeper. The first, the one the voice clearly belonged to, was clothed in black breast-plate with a raven holding a skull in it's talons. A mace that looked like a skull was slung on his back. He seemed to drain the light out of wherever he was standing. Standing aside from him was a man dressed in simple garb; a loose tunic and breaches, and a cape with the hood down. He kept playing with the edges of his sleeves, and Pixie would bet a pretty shiny that he had daggers down there, but couldn’t see any to be sure. The last one in the room was a halfling that almost escaped Della’s notice, who kept creeping around the edge of the firelight. After watching the little sneak, Della noticed him look straight at where she was flying. She paused, involuntarily, but then remembered that she was invisible and no one can see her, not that they no enough to look. But then Della noticed something rather odd: the little hafling’s shadow seemed to be looking at her too. Della shook her head, thinking she needed to lay off the honey mead a bit, and then noticed that the shadow disappeared.
“Must have moved too far away from the lantern” thought Della. At that point, the shadow that had been growing behind her reached out and wrapped its black arms around her.
“Look what I found” squeaked the halfling in an inordinately happy voice. The party looked at the shadow, which seemed to be thrashing about with itself.
The man in the dark robes, after looking at the struggle said “You may as well show yourself, invisible one”.
Della, deciding that it wasn’t worth her effort to fight these people, turned visible. Turning with her cutest look, she asked “Could you let me out of this, halfling?”
“Ok,” said the halfling with a smitten look. The shadow started to loosen his arms.
“I would advice against that” said the dark lord. “We don’t know what she’s heard, and what she’s seen”.
“Me?” Della said incredulously. She giggled self-consciously. “I haven’t seen or heard anything. Come, Mr. Halfling; what could you possible fear from me? Please, I’m cold.” At this, she batted her eyes at him.
The halfling blushed and chuckled, and the shadow released her grip entirely. Like a shot, Della, was invisible and shot out the top of the trap door.
“Skye, Skye,” Della yelled, flying through people’s mug of beer.
“Della, you know that this is easier when you are visible” Skye said.
“Oh yeah,” she said, going visible. As she became visible, the patrons were startled to see a figure that was about 2 feet tall with butterfly wings out of her back. Her skin was a milky white, and her hair was a bright impatiens pink with a sheen through it. The very tips of her ears poked out from bunches of hair on either side of her head, giving her hair the appearance of a very wild, pink bush. Her eyes seemed impossibly big and were the green of a new buds in spring. She had a quiver of arrows and a bow on her back, and bracers on her arms, and an amulet around her neck, but not too much else. The scraps of clothes that covered her seemed to cover just the basics of propriety; and counter-intuitively, had the effect of making her look more naked than if she would be entirely nude. As she noticed the eyes on her, she winked and smiled at the patrons, enjoying their shock and discomfort.
“If you have had quite enough at teasing the patrons, you seemed like you were in some distress just a moment ago,” Skye said, rolling her eyes.
“Yes, yes I was” said Della, snapping back to attention. “In the basement, the rude jackass was pleading with some evil looking dudes, about a girl and a Duke, and a shadow grabbed me but I defeated it and I need you to attack the dark one”.
“So what I got out of that is “you got in trouble and now someone is chasing after you.” Is that about right?” Skye asked.
“Um,” said Della thinking, “Maybe”.
Walter came out from the kitchen, eyes searching for Della. His eyes seized on her and her companion. “Panzer,” he said, “Seize them”.
In the corner, a figure that everyone had assumed that was a statute gets to his feet. “Okay boss,” its gravely voice responds as it starts it’s slow lumbering towards them.
“This is a mistake” Skye replied evenly, her hands up, but not quite at her bow. “We have done nothing to harm you.”
“Panzer, wait.”
“Okay boss” replied Panzer, instantly stopping.
“If that is the case, why don’t you and your little pixie friend come back here and we can talk…away from the crowd”.
“Give me some assurances to your character, and we will talk rationally” Skye replied.
“Do I have that for both of you?”
“You shall have to ask Della for her own assurances”
“Well, small one?”
“ She just said my name, tall, dark and creepy” said Della.
“Della…remember the moving statute behind us?” asked Skye, with just a hint of worry in her voice.
“Oh, who cares about the moving tin can, I have the powers of the universe at my finger tips, and no dark dummy is going to be rude to me. I happen to be of the perfect size, you know.”
“Enough of this,” said the dark man. “My name is Walter….the Tomb Lord and High one of (figure out what the rest of his titles are). I give you my word that I shall not harm you, and I request your assurance of the same…Della”.
“Okay, fine” said Della happily. Just zoomed towards the kitchen. “Last one there is a rotten egg!”
Walter gave Skye a look like “You travel with this one?”. Skye did a motion that may have been shrug, but may have just been her adjusting her cape.
“Come on Panzer” said Walter.
“Yes boss,” said Panzer.
Once in the kitchen, Walter made a gesture to the other man. Suddenly, a burlap bag snapped into the air, and Della found herself inside of a burlap sack.
“Heh, heh, pixie in a bag” said the man.
“Hey, let me out of here!” yelled Della. “I’ll turn you all into JELLY! Let me out!”
“Tomblord, you promised me safety” Skye said, going for her bow.
“I did, and she is perfectly safe”. Walter replied. “I just need her to stay inside of the room for a bit, and the only way to make sure she does that is to restrain her.”
“Sir, speak your piece, and quickly, and let me go, or golum or no golum, I will take you all on.” Skye said, notching an arrow on her bow.
“I’m not a golum,” said Panzer.
“It can say something other than ‘Yes boss’” asked Della from inside of the bag.
“Yes. I just find most of the time I don’t need to,” said Panzer.
“Huh, that makes sense.” said Della.
“Your pixie doesn’t seem to mind the bag too much,” said the man holding it.
“I’m not her pixie” Della said at the same time Skye said “She’s not my pixie”.
“But you’re right, I am quite comfortable in here” said Della.
“You see? She’s perfectly safe,” said Walter.
Skye put her bow away. “If she doesn’t mind, I don’t mind.”
“By why wouldn’t she mind?” asked the man. “She’s in a burlap sake!”
“Yes, but the sake is full of gold,” said Della. “And jewels. I like sparkly things. I think I’ll put some of these into my own bag, so I have them for later.”
“What?” said the man, swallowing the lie wholesale. “I must have grabbed the wrong bag when I went to nab her!” At this, she went to open the bag. Della, seizing her opportunity, flew out of the bag.
“Wow, you’re dumb,” said Della with a smirk.
“This is a waste of time,” said Walter. “You, Pixie-“
“Name,” Della said in a sing-song voice. “I have a name, you know my name, call me by my name-“
“Della,” Walter said through clenched teeth. “What did you hear downstairs?”
“Well, I heard that you were a meanie that didn’t care about helping this guy’s daughter, and something about a duke…really, I got distracted by a shadow”.
“Then, you heard nothing about my greater quest?” asked the Tomblord?
“Your what?” asked Della.
“We’re done here” said Walter. “We must press on.”
“Please, sir, please!” begged the innkeeper. “I need your help!”
“What is your problem, exactly,” asked Skye.
“My daughter, she has been taken from me,” at this, the inn-keeper started weeping.
Skye, looking around awkwardly, said “Please sir, I cannot help you unless you give me more information.”
“Man, stop crying” said Della, her annoyances at the inn-keeper turning to pity. She hugged his head, “We will help you find your daughter.”
“Truly?” asked the inn-keeper.
Skye looked him straight in the eye. “Truly, good sir. I am at your service.”
“What of the others?” the innkeeper asked.
“They have to make their own decision.”
“Tell your tale, old man, and I’ll see what I can do,” said the man with the burlap bag, ignoring the glare of Walter.
“This morning, in the wee hours of the night, my daughter was getting water from the well. I heard her scream, and went and rushed to find her. The water bucket was overturned and I saw footprints in the ground. I went to the Duke’s representatives, but they didn’t want to do anything. I fear that she will be sacrificed in 3 days, when the full moon rises, for some sort of dark magic”.
“Then I will make way at first light to find her,” said Skye. “Do you have any idea where they may have taken her?”
“My guess is the old castle to the north,” said the Innkeeper. “If you get my daughter back to me, unharmed, you will have my gratitude, and a bag of silver”.
“Shall you be joining us, friend?” Skye addressed the man.
“Aye, Mordain shall help you,” he said after a pause.
“As shall I and Shadow,” said the halfling.
Walter glowered at his party. “Since I have to wait for my party to finish, I might as well help you. At least we can be done quickly. Panzer shall join us as well.”
“Wait a minute,” said Della. “He can talk, he can think, why don’t we ask him what he wants to do?”
“I’ll do whatever the boss tells me to do,” said Panzer.
“Satisfied, Della?” asked Walter, a shadow of a smirk on his face.
Della, sticking out her tongue, did a barrel roll in the air and disappeared.
“Where’d she go?” asked Panzer.
“You get used to it, my friend,” said Skye. “Well, we are all tired, and the trail is going to be dead with this rain anyway. We shall sleep for the night, and then pursue in the early morning. Be ready to leave at 6 bells.”

Negative Ads

2008-10-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Dear sweet zombie Jesus, I want this election to be over. I am sick of this: I want Obama to win, but at this point I'll take a McCain win if it means we can all move on with our respective lives.

But, we still have one more week left, which still means one more week of campaign ads. I finally got sick of each side saying that the other was running a negative campaign, and how negative it is, and who did what, so I decided to do a little research on my own. That's right, you guessed it: it's time for another Excel graph!

I had a difficult time coming up with an objective standard of what was a "smear" and what was a "criticism" so I went with a fairly objective, but not very in-depth, analysis of the ads. Additionally, I only used the television ads (Obama, for instance, has over 1000 Obama Youtube ads). The ads were split into four categories: Opposing candidate not mentioned, Ads compare/ criticize opponent, ad only talks about opposition, and ad countering opponent's assertions. Just in case it wasn't clear, the ads in blue are Obama's, red are McCain's.

The final count is: 21 of Obama's ads are just about him, 19 compare/contrast Obama and McCain's ad, 45 are ads just criticizing McCain, and 10 of them are countering ads. Which adds up to little over a fifth of the ads as "positive".

McCain's ads break down as: 14 are just about him, 11 compare/contrast, 16 are just opposing Obama, and 4 are countering opponent's information. Which makes a little over a third of his ads are "positive".

What does this all mean? It means that both candidates are running a mostly negative campaign. And why shouldn't they? Negative ads are the most effective. If people REALLY wanted to stop politicians from running negative ads, they should stop responding to them.

This break down was the best I could do for an objective standard, but I still feel like it is somewhat misleading. For instance, the worst thing Obama said about McCain was that he "lied", he was "out of touch" and "more of the same". The worst thing McCain did was imply Obama was the Anti-Christ and likened him to a pack of wolves. I honestly think that McCain's were more negative, but like I said, how could I come up with an objective standard? A

Final points: Obama has WAY more ads. Like, twice as many ads. I guess his fundraising is doing better. From a communication standpoint, I liked Obama's ads better because I felt they were more creative and better done. There were more citations in Obama's ads as well, pointing out the voting record of McCain and Obama. The running meme seems to be that Obama's "all talk" but it was the McCain ads that never pointed to anything specific. I particularly liked Obama's 2-minute "explanation sessions" that he had.

Obama also had way more Spanish ads too, but I guess Obama's probably better suited to that demographic.

As always, multiple pairs of eyes going over my work is appreciated.

Small Town Values Suck

2008-09-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin, in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, ended up quoting known racist, right-wing writer (via Pandagon). The quote she used was:

We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.”

.

Let's ignore, for a minute, who she choose to quote (and whether or not she was even aware of it) and focus in on the substance of her statement. She is claiming that people in small towns are more moral than the rest of us: those of us who live in cities. Now, first and foremost, this statement irritates me because of it's vagueness: I live in a "city" in North Dakota, but you can drive across it in less than twenty minutes. Do they raise "good people" here, or are we dishonest, and insincere, and undignified?

But, beside the ambiguities of "small town", I'm still going to call shenanigans on her statement. People in small towns are no more honest, sincere, or dignified than people in cities, and a lot of times, they are substantially less so.

I have lived in multiple communities, in multiple states, that are various sizes; and nobody was de facto more moral. My bike has been stolen in small towns, whereas my wallet full of money was returned to me in a big city. I was threatened in a suburban school by a white girl, and I was tortured by guys in a small town. I have met cultured people in towns in the middle of nowhere, and complete neadrathals in cities. The number of people you're around doesn't make you a better or worse person.

In general, there are a few differences between small towns and large cities.

Small towns compared to cities:

A greater percentage of people feel comfortable being openly racist, sexist, heterocentrist, and discriminatory to non-Christians in more public places. That doesn't mean that there aren't racist people in cities, or even the same amount in sheer numbers. But, I think it tends to be that if you live in the city, at some point you actually have to run across people of different ethnicities, belief structures, women in more than one career field, and non-heterosexual people, than if you live in a small town.

Small towns are filled with gossipers. Big towns, are too, but because of sheer numbers, it is impossible for everybody to know everybody else's business. There are no secrets in small town.

Small towns lack culture. They generally have one community theatre (if that) that puts on nonthreatning plays like Okalahoma and Shakespearean plays that most people don't know are dirty. The variety shows that they put on are likewise the only form of concerts, generally, except for an extremely local band for county fairs and the like. The theatres put on completely mainstream movies, about two weeks after they are released, and even they get filtered a lot. Compare that to a city which, at any given night, you have your choice of performances, concerts, clubs, museums, whatever.

There are pros and cons to living anywhere, but to suggest that people are more moral in small towns means the person doing the suggesting doesn't know what "moral" means.

Pro-Life Organizations: Which Lives?

2008-07-27T12:18:00.001-07:00

This is part of a continuing series.

When looking at pro-life organizations, I wanted to see which groups were actually non-violent and which were not. I choose not to be somewhat of a smart-aleck and include such things as opposition to war, and the death penalty (which most organizations were not), and I choose to overlook such organizations that were anti-stem cell research (which could potentially save thousands of lives), but do a narrow focus on their tactics and actions. This was particularly difficult, as there were many organizations that professed peace, but then did bullying tactics or their founders were in jail for murder of a doctor or something. To bridge this gap, I included if they either condoned violence, or had ties to violent groups. Bullying tactics such as yelling "baby-killer" to passing women going into abortion clinics did not get classified as violent, but if they had signs that suggested that "baby-killers" should be shot, I included that in "condones violence". If the group advocated for harassment of doctors, I stuck that it the "ties to violence" block, as well. I also did not differentiate between organizations that had no ties to violence but did not condemn the violence of other pro-life organizations and organizations that had no ties to violence AND condemned the violence of other pro-life organizations.

UPDATE- I'm linking to where I found violence for the groups.

Army of God- http://www.armyofgod.com/POClist.html

Life Dynamics Inc- http://www.kaisernetwork.org/frame/index.cfm?goto=http://www.kaisernetwork.org/reports/2000/03/kr000322.4.htm
Uses harassment and stalking against doctors.

Missionaries to the Preborn- http://www.mhrn.org/publications/fact%20sheets%20and%20adivsories/Missionaries.pdf

Missionaries to the Unborn- http://www.mttu.com/elijahmin/PPWrite-In%20Campaign.htm

Operation Rescue- http://www.now.org/nnt/05-98/scheidler.html

Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust- Founder was jailed for violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_of_the_Abortion_Holocaust but organization does condemn violence.

Pro-Life Organizations: Do they help women raise babies?

2008-07-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

This is part of a continuing series.

If an organization was truly pro-life, they would try an attack the causes of abortion (unwanted pregnancy), and the major reason cited for abortion (financial constraints). The best way to do this is community support for children. I put in organizations that did not support governmental assistance, but did support "pregnancy crisis centers" of some variety. These centers generally run from a place to stay during pregnancy and the first year, to some material assistance (diapers, formula, teddy bears, et cetera).

UPDATE-

I changed the graph, because Army of God does not support Pregnancy Crisis Centers. They do not address welfare. Sorry for the mistake.

Pro-Life Organizations: For Sex Ed?

2008-07-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

This is part of continuing series.

In tandem with contraceptives, there is a strong correlation with comprehensive sexual education and low unwanted pregnancy rates (and corresponding low abortion rates). "Abstinence Only" education has been associated with higher rates of unwanted pregnancy then no sexual education at all.

Pro-Life Organizations: Are they for contraception?

2008-07-27T12:01:00.001-07:00

This is part of a continuing series.

I also wanted to determine if pro-life organizations supported the most effective way to reduce abortion rates, which is increased contraception use. If the organization was fine with they barrier methods, but not hormonal methods like the pill, I gave them "limited support for contraceptives". If it was "Natural Family Planning" but against all other forms, I put them in "anti-contraceptives". If they were opposed to one form of contraceptives, and did not address others, I put them in "opposed contraceptives".

UPDATE
To clarify, if a group gets put into "opposes contraceptive" it does not necessarily mean that they wish to criminalize it. But, if an organization supports Pharmacists "right" to not dispense birth control, or if they said that contraceptives contribute to a "culture of death" or "a child-unfriendly environment" I put that in "opposes contraceptives", even if they don't speak to making it illegal.

UPDATE the Second
In order to be more fair, I looked over the organizations again, and added whether or not they were against birth control, or whether or not they were against some types of contraceptives and did not address other ones. I went over the ones that also didn't address contraceptives, and found some of them did actually oppose Emergency contraceptive, so they were added to the last list.

Pro-Life Organizations: Are the Secular?

2008-07-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

Awhile back on Punkassblog, I said I was going to do some investigating into Pro-Life Organizations. Unfortunately, Wordpress seems to not like me, so this post will be exclusively here where it all began, Teller of Truths.

The only pro-life organizations I looked at were groups in the United States on the national level, that were on the Wikipedia pro-life organization list.

The first thing I checked was whether or not the organization was secular, or explicitly Chrsitian (none of the organizations claimed any other kind of religious affiliation). They were considered to have ties to Christian organizations if they had three articles that spoke from a Christian perspective, and/or linked to five Christian organizations.

Pro-Life Organizations: Women's concerns?

2008-07-25T18:53:00.001-07:00

This is part of a continuing series on pro-life organizations.

To see if pro-life organizations were really about women's concerns, I then looked to see how many of them were run by men or women (as sort of an easy marker). Abortion concerns being particularly related to women, as (aside from Mr. Beatty) they are the only one's who can get pregnant, they are the ones who should have the most to say about it.

I looked at who ran the organizations, and how balanced the board was.

Where I Am I Not Liberal?

2008-05-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Here in the soaked-red state of North Dakota, I am basically considered to be a hippy/ liberal freak. My friends, mainly moderate, apathetic, or conservative basically think I'm just a little bit to the right of Karl Marx. However, there are some places that I split with liberals, and join in with my conservative brethren.

1) Gun Rights
While it is true that I do believe in reasonable restrictions, generally I do believe that gun rights are an individual rights issue. Guns are a tool, like anything, can be used to harm....or they can be used for fun, like most gun-users do. I flinch every time a fellow liberal brings up the stereotype of the racist, sexist, ridiculously macho, mistakes-his-guns-for-his-penis gun owners. While it is true that I have met gun-owners that do fulfill parts or all of that stereotypes (I worked as a puller in a gun range for chrissake: you see all kinds), most (I would say the vast majority) of gun-owners are normal people. My friend PE likes Soviet rifles, because he likes the history of them. Hubby and I have grown up our entire lives with hunting rifles and shotguns. I have a few outliers: my friend Grunt has a weird fascination with his AR, and my friends WA, A, and B have a little bit too much paranoia that the government/robbers are out to get them, but that's rather harmless, really.

I am to the left of my friends on this one, however slightly, on what constitutes "reasonable restrictions". Pretty much everyone agrees with the background check, and the three day waiting period, but I also want a mandatory gun safety class for every licence. I also don't think the right to bear arms encompasses fully automatic weapons, and I think there is a strong enough argument to make that banning them constitutes a compelling state interest (which is the standard a state would be held to if the 2nd Amendment was incorporated). I also would like gun registration, but I wouldn't actually advocate for it, because I have never seen a government capable of registering that wouldn't also use this information to take it. Finally, I'd like to see strict enforcement of gun laws: if you commit a crime with a gun, you get lose that right.

Honestly, this is one of those things that I don't understand the left's position at all. It feels ideologically inconsistent. If I had to sum the left's philosophy, it would be "individual liberty, collective responsibility". Restricting an individual from participating in a harmless pastime seems like something that conservatives would worry about, not progressives. And, at it's root, target shooting and hunting are no more dangerous that any other sports. Which brings me to...

2) Animal rights
When it comes to treating anything that can feel pain with respect, I'm right there. Torturing animals is cruel in and of itself, and often times rings serious warning bells for larger psychological problems. But, where I draw the line is with PETA, vegans, and other animal-rights activists. I wear dead animals, I eat dead animals, and use the products of animals. Silk is my favorite fabric, fur is the warmest thing I can wear, leather is great for hiking, and you can take my meat when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I do support organic meats: I think factory farming is cruel (going back to point one) and when you kill an animal, it should be done so that it does not feel any pain. But seriously: a cow or a chicken has no purpose other than to feed or cloth humans. They are the most thoroughly domesticated, ridiculously stupid creatures on the planet. You don't exactly see herds of cows roaming in the wild; if we did not have ranchers, we would not have cows. The only way to keep them from going extinct is by using them. As with hunting, I support that for the same reason that I support voluntary childlessness: there is only so many resources to go around. Deer hunting is a great example of it: if left to propagate, deer become a danger to themselves and others. When it comes down between car vs. deer, both always lose. And a quick shot through the head is much better than dying of starvation.

Those of you reading might notice a common thread: I seem to value the lives of humans more than the lives of animals. And you would be right: I absolutely do. Human beings are sentient: we are self-aware, we have emotions, we know we are going to die. I do not believe that this is an insignificant trait, and I do believe that it means that we are more important than animals. This is a major shift from most progressives.

Important note: because I am not vegan or vegetarian does not mean that I don't support that decision for all who make it. Each person has to decide what they need to do for him/herself. I respect it as a valid and a legitimate choice.

There are smaller points of policy that I shift rightwards from the average progressive, and others where I shift leftwards from the average progressive, but those are the two main ones.

The Medicalization of Childbirth

2008-04-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

Last week, I finished watching "The Business of Being Born". Ricki Lake did this documentary to highlight the differences in treatment she had with her two children. One was done at the hospital, and ended up as a Cesarean. One was at home, with a midwife, and it was videotaped.

Interspaced between this was some history of childbirth, particularly in the United States. Starting at around the turn of the century, births shifted from something that was at home, to something that was done at a hospital. This shift was not because medical science was particularly good at childbearing (or really, because it was even as midwifery) but because an interesting intersection that we all know and love: capitalism, sexism, and racism. Doctors at the time went on a massive advertising campaign, aimed at telling women that other women were not as good at delivering babies as they were. That these Russian, German, and other immigrant women just wanted your money, and you were a bad mother if you didn't go to the hospital to get a delivery done there. Interestingly enough; it was not actually safer to go to the hospital, if you were in labor. Midwifery had been around for awhile, women knew how to deliver babies. They, at the very least, knew that you washed your hands before you went to the next birth, something that doctors at the time considered immaterial. Midwifes also knew to listen to a pregnant women when she was in labor, as opposed to putting up a sheet and ignoring her. They also knew that squatting, or in water, was an easier and safer way to give birth then lying on one's back, where you have to not only have to work against your body, but gravity (but hey, with your legs like that, it was easier for the doctor).

It then went on to talk about "twilight sleep" or "zombie sleep". For those of you who are unfamiliar (and I certainly was before I saw this) twilight sleep was when a women came to the hospital, and then was injected with morphine and scopolamine. Now, supposedly this was to kill pain; but what it really did was put pregnant women into an alternate state of mind, so that they forgot the labor pains. They also forgot the labor. And how to control their own body. Women had to be tied down to the bed, (with sheepskin, so that they wouldn't leave big bruises or scratches). Watching the videos were again horrific: a women, tied to a bed, thrashing about, with a curtain at her midsection, and four white guys staring intently at her uterus. For something that is normally held as one of the most feminine of experiences, it was eerily impersonal.*

The movie then continued to show the difference between medical birth and midwifery. For one thing, the births done with a midwife seemed a whole lot less painful. The midwife was there the whole time, as opposed to a doctor who showed up at the last second. The position seemed more comfortable as well; if the woman wanted to get up and walk around, she was allowed to. If she wanted to squat, she squatted. With a midwife, they listened to what the women said she wanted. With the doctors, it seemed as if the doctor told her what she wanted.

Not to say that the movie was Luddite, at all. Every midwife there said that she was grateful that there was the knowledge of obstetricians out there, for the complicated births. But they all made mention that, 9 times out of 10, women did not need to go to the doctor. That first and foremost, those doctors are surgeons, and sometimes do unnecessary cesareans out of misplaced concern, or because of time constraints, that is not actually healthy for the mother or the new baby. They compared infant mortality in the United States with other countries in Europe where it was far more common to have a midwife, and lo and behold, the US has more infant deaths then Europe. However, they never proved a causal relationship; there are a variety of reasons why that might be.

Among the problems of medicalization they talked about, one was talking about how the introduction of medicine was playing weird problems with women's hormones. First, a women is given an epidural, for the pain. But an epidural numbs more than just pain, it also makes it more difficult to have contractions. So then, a women is given pitocin, which is a synthetic form of oxytocin (the birthing hormone). Pitocin has some major problems though: first, the contractions it causes are longer, and stronger (and therefore more painful). Also, it can constrict bloodflow to the uterus, so that the fetus has less oxygen flowing to it. So, to numb the pain, they give the women another epidural. And this starts the cycle again, until the fetus goes into distress (and the mother is also pretty distressed at this point as well). At this point, they rush the women to get a Cesarean, leaving a scar in the women, an increased risk of infection, and a now-distressed baby.

A few things struck me watching this film, in no particular order:

1) Why does any women ever (well, with Tom Beatty make that any person) ever get and stay pregnant long enough to give birth? Seriously, even with the midwife, water births, were it just seemed like a grunt and slip, and "ooo, baby" it still seemed painful, long, and full of viscera. This movie made me hug my orthotricyclin like no one's business.

2) This movie was far too crunchy for my tastes. I can see why childbirth is a unique experience for women, because it is generally just women that can do it. But seriously, I prefer the ideas they mention at the end a lot better: where hospitals have birthing centers, where midwifes work. You can have your birth in a water way, or at the very least squatting, but you are still at the hospital if you are that 1 in 10 case that needs emergency help.

3) What is it with some guys and their seemingly uncontrollable urges to take women's experiences and define them/ control them? First you have medical doctors saying that women don't actually know what's going on for pregnancy, and then you have guys making laws about when it's okay for us to have an abortion, and guys who think that birth control is emasculating, and guys who seem to think they know what happens during PMS better than women. It's really annoying; I don't assume to know what it's like to have blue balls, why should they assume they have any IDEA what it's like to go around in a feminine fleshy meatbag?

This movie is one that I think people should definitely watch** (if you have a netflix account, it's instantly downloadable, by the way). It shows a very interesting perception of childbirth, from women's point of view.

*Interestingly enough, the feminists at the time held up scopolamine as a liberation. The movie made mention that at the time, childbirth was still thought as something that should be as painful as possible, for the "curse of eve". The feminist at the time, saw this as an opportunity to not have to suffer through childbirth, and jumped on the opportunity to show that no, childbirth was painful because there wasn't the medicine to fix it, not because of any Biblical curse. Next time an anti-choicer shows up saying that early feminists were against abortion (which they should have been, because at the time an abortion had more of a chance of killing you than childbirth), point out that they also supported drugging women during childbirth. We are all a part of the time we grew up in, bound by some of those mindsets and technologies.

**If you're like me, you'll watch most of this movie through slits in your fingers. Seriously, think horror movie viscera, and then imagine in that in your most sensitive parts.

Comments Policy Redux

2008-04-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

Jake, our resident troll, has reminded me through his actions that it is time to update my my comments policy. Now, for those of you have been reading for awhile may remember that I reserve the right to delete any and all comments that I think are abusive, too stupid, or basically not interesting any more. If you are worried about free speech, start your own damn blog and spew to your heart's content. My blog is like my house; if I don't like you, I have no reason to let you stay here.

But, inspired by the great time they've been having at Shakesville, I've decided to mimic their policy slightly. If you post an email address, your comment will either stay as is, or be deleted. If you post anonymously, and I decide that you are an annoying little troll, I get to change your post as I see fit.

Identity

2008-04-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

First I was a human baby.

But not to long after that I was-

Girl

I was dressed in pink and my name ended in an “a”.

Next there was “girl child”

With skirts and dolls,

I learned about drag

By turning Barbie into a parachuter

Mom and Dad told me to stop climbing trees

Later, when I learned colors,

Green, blue, red-

I learned I was another thing;

White

I learned about this nice guy named Jesus

And his mean father God

My parents told me that I was

Christian

Then there was “student”

And I was told how good I was at English

The A’s in math were glossed over

I did like to read

The first identity I took-

Book-worm, smart, geek

Nerd

Ignore the perfect spiral I could throw

Then there were the throes of puberty

My body rebelled,

And I developed things-

Boobs, hips, blood,

And a new word was pushed on me

(As true as it wasn’t)

Slut

I thought about who I was

And who I wasn’t

And choose my labels for myself

Agnostic

Feminist

Smart

Opinionated

But, From everyone else

I am still

Girl

White

Christian

Nerd

Slut

And I never got back my first label

Human

Goddess Cassandra is moving up

2008-04-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

Well, the awesome Marc of Punkassblog has invited me to blog at his house, so I'm heading over. Fear not, I shall continue to blog here, I shall just hope that my pontification shall be to a larger audience.

What I end up getting on UND's crappy search engine

2008-04-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

UND has the most out-of-date, random search engine. Tomorrow, we are going to have a symposium on the rights of a child, and I wanted to know if there was a more comprehensive list than the flyer I have. When I went searching for it, I found this. UND has plenty of "pro-life" organizations, but I hadn't seen this one before (I didn't know we had ANY other organization claiming to be feminist on campus, besides the Pro-Choice Voice). Since my laptop died, and I can't write on Truth Commissions until I'm out of work, I figured I'd write about this. (The original is in italics, my response in normal writing).

ProWoman Answers to ProChoice Questions Talking Points

· No woman deserves to have an abortion.

No person deserves to have an surgery. It's not a matter of "deserving" anything, it's just one of those things we have to do. I don't "deserve" to scrub toilets, but if I want a nice-smelling bathroom I have to.

· "It's our body. It's our choice." That translates into "It's our problem."

Generally, yeah. Having a female body means that we have female "problems". This includes periods, breasts, and the possibility of pregnancy. Guys have their own problems.

· Abortion advocates pit women against children. Lack of resources and support are the real enemies.

Really? Feminists don't support women and children?

· We need to systematically eliminate the root causes of abortion primarily lack of practical resources and emotional support.

No argument here.

Avoid diversions from what is important Those who oppose our prowoman, prolife position often bring up ancillary issues they believe will cast us in a negative light. Be prepare to reject the confrontational, negative tactics and reinforce our woman centered message and solutions.

Okay, I'll try and stay on topic

· Sometimes you are talking to a woman who has had an abortion. She may assume that you are choosing a baby over women or condemning her. Never attack the questioner.

Thanks

· Acknowledge the reasons that drive women to abortion, but emphasize that abortion is not the answer. Women need holistic solutions and deserve real support.

Rape and incest

· It is normal to wish you could erase a painful experience such as rape. The woman deserves our support. · Abortion is a second act of violence against the woman. It doesn't erase the memory.

Abortion isn't an act of violence if a woman wants it. Much like sex is not an act of violence if it is consensual, but IS an act of violence when it's non-consensual, a wanted abortion is not harmful. When a woman is raped, and becomes pregnant, the pregnancy can be a violation of that's woman's body, over and over again. She now has to have her body overtaken by a foreign body, risk her health, her job, and her station in society. Abortion isn't going to erase the memory, it'll merely stop the continuing violation. If she chooses to continue the pregnancy, because she feels like that'll help her get over the rape, that is her CHOICE, and should be supported. Much like the difference between sex and rape is consent, the difference between a wanted pregnancy and an unwanted pregnancy is worlds apart.

· We should punish the perpetrator of the crime, not the victims.

Duh. I would even go a step further and say that we should try and prevent rape by empowering women and teaching guys that consent is the presence of a "yes" not an absence of a "no". But, as it stands, rape prosecution is really, really, really low. And that still doesn't address the fact that a rape victim is still pregnant, and if she doesn't want to be, it is a continuing violation.

· One Vanderbilt med student told other students that the "abortion was worse than the rape."

So? I still can't figure out how this is an argument.

· Pregnancy is not a punishment. Julie Makimaa's mother ("Victory Over Violence" issue of The American Feminist) told her that she was the "only good thing to come out of the rape."

Good for her. I'm glad she was capable of finding peace from her experience. That doesn't mean that every one will, or should.

· When someone asks about exceptions for rape and incest, we must think of how that makes those feel who were conceived through sexual assault. As one Berkeley grad student said to her prochoice peers, "I have a right to be here."

Yes, she does. Most of the time, we can point to some random negative experience that can result in our birth. My random experience was my mom had ovarian cancer, and was told she wasn't able to have kids for at least five years after the surgery. If my mom wouldn't have ovarian cancer, she would have been using birth control, and quite possibly I wouldn't have existed. That doesn't mean that I don't have a right to exist, it merely means that it was her choice if she wanted to continue the pregnancy after the random bad thing happen (RBT= ovarian cancer). Some of them are more negative than another, such as the case of the Berkeley student born of rape. Her mother choose to have her, that gave her the right to exist. That's really all there is to it: we have the right to exist because our mother choose to bear us. Looking into the conditions of our conception is really silly: if my mom wouldn't have ovarian cancer, I wouldn't have existed, but I still want to eliminate ovarian cancer. If her mother wouldn't have been raped, she wouldn't have existed, but I still wish to eliminate rape.

· Rebecca Wasser Kiessling, a young attorney and mother who was conceived through sexual assault asks, "Did I deserve the death penalty?"

For what? You can't get the death penalty until you actually exist.

· Could you look at someone conceived in violence and tell him or her they never should have been born?

No, because it wasn't up to me on whether or not they should have been born. That's up to the woman who actually bore them into existence.

What if your daughter was pregnant?

· I would love her and support her unconditionally and welcome my grandchild into this world.

Would you still love her and support her unconditionally if she didn't want to give birth?

What if your daughter was raped? · I would love her and my grandchild unconditionally, and I would do everything in my power to prosecute the perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law.

Same question.

Imposing values and morality on others/What gives you the right to tell women what to

do?

· Our values are based on principles of nonviolence and nondiscrimination.

Nifty.

· I simply believe that we can do better for women. Don't you?

Um, I don't know how you can "do better" for women then letting them have autonomy over their body.

Don't women need to control their own lives?

· Obviously if she were truly in control and did not want to be pregnant then she wouldn't be pregnant. The question now is, what is the best possible nonviolent outcome for her?

Obviously, birth control fails, or women aren't always educated on how to use it, or are raped. There are things outside of our control; but this is one way to put it back under our control. And, to reiterate, abortion is not a violent act.

Don't you respect women enough to allow her to make a choice?

· Women do not have abortions as a matter of choice, but because they feel they have no support or resources to support a different choice. A coerced decision is not a free choice; it's a last resort.

Yeah, some women do have abortions as a matter of choice. We should, of course, offer support if they want to raise children. That's where the "choice" part of it does come in- there is more than abortion. But, abortion is also an option: if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, she shouldn't be forced to be.

· We support nonviolent choices single motherhood, fatherhood, grandparenthood, marriage and various adoption options. · A society that promotes abortion as a necessity underestimates women.

Abortion will always be a necessity for some women. There will always be pregnancy complications, there will always be birth control failure, there will always be women who don't want to be pregnant for any given reason. This isn't "promotion" this is just a fact.

What if her partner, friends or family abandoned her?

· Lack of support often coerces women into abortion. She needs to know that there are perfect strangers out there who will care for her even if those she counts on the most have let her down.· She also needs to know about child support laws that prohibit coercion by the father by physical force or threats to withhold child support.

Okay, I can't really say anything against this. We should support a woman if she wants to continue a pregnancy and have a child. But, the key phrase is "if she WANTS to".

What if she is poor?

· We do not eliminate poverty by eliminating poor women's children. It is degrading to poor women to expect or imply that their children aren't welcome.

No one ever said that abortion will eliminate poverty. But, if you don't have the resources to continue a pregnancy, or support a child; they aren't going to magically appear after the fact.

· She needs to know that there are pregnancy care centers listed in the abortion alternatives section of the yellow pages that provide direct assistance and coordinate public and private assistance.

A bag of diapers and some heavy moralizing doesn't get rid of the expense of a pregnancy, and later a child.

She "just doesn't want it"

· It's always more complicated than that. We can address each of her concerns working together for peaceful solutions.

No, sometimes it really is that simple. Sometimes a woman just doesn't want to be pregnant. It's good enough for me, really.

You are antiwoman

· Abortion destroys that which makes us women.

Um, what? What makes us a woman has nothing to do with capable of being pregnant. And autonomy is what makes us HUMAN.

· As Alice Paul, the original author of the Equal Rights Amendment, said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Okay, I keep looking for the context of this quote, and I cannot find it. The only quote I can find is on "pro-life" sites. Not that it matters; it's a general appeal to authority, and as such, a logical fallacy.

· Abortion is a reflection that we have failed women and women have settled for less.

Um, what?

The "morning after" pill, so called "emergency contraception"

· The "morning after" pill is basically a megadose of chemicals.

Well, it's not really a "megadose", but close enough. The morning after pill is basically birth control pill.

· There has been no testing or information about the longterm effects of these drugs on women and future children.

Well, the FAA approved it, and there is no reason to suggest that it will have any long-term ill-effects. So far, nothing has come of it. It's okay to be hesitant, but seriously, that's why we have the FAA in the first place.

RU486 · Rather than being a simple, private alternative to surgical abortion, it actually requires three or four visits to a doctor.

Well, the idea is that you don't have to get, you know a surgery. Any time you get a surgery, you risk infection- there's less of risk of infection with RU486. But, yes, it requires at least 2 visits to the doctor, and sometimes more because of insane "waiting period" laws.

· Women may suffer the trauma of aborting at home or work and seeing a recognizablefetus.

Some women may, not all women. There is no way that you'll see a recognizable fetus. RU486 can only work to the 9th week, and that's pushing it for most doctors. At 9 weeks, a fetus is about 9 mm big and looks like this.

· Men wouldn't tolerate a drug this potentially dangerous and ineffective. Why should women?

Yeah they would. See: Viagra. See: Steriods.

· If a miscarriage is one of the worst things a woman can experience, then intentionally inducing an abortion is a reflection that we have failed her.

There is a world of difference between a wanted pregnancy and an unwanted one. In a miscarriage, women are looking forward to having a child. In an unwanted pregnancy, the women feels her very body has rebelled against her.

Partialbirth Abortion ·
Partialbirth abortion requires three days of coerced labor. · Women are awake during the delivery and witness their children's brains being removed from their children's skulls. How will this affect women emotionally and psychologically?

Late-term abortions are generally done because there were major problems, such as the fetus is already dead, or that the pregnancy will kill the mother, or the fetus has horrible abnormalities. I don't doubt that this would be fairly horrific for the woman involved, particularily considering most of these would be wanted pregnancy. But, outlawing it just puts women's lives in danger.

· The procedure can damage the cervix, contributing to multiple miscarriages in the future.

See above.

Disability
What if the fetus is or could be disabled?
· If actual or potential disability is a reason to devalue children before birth, what cruel message does this send to disabled people who are already born?

I agree, this is a bad reason to have an abortion (for me). But, I'm not the one who's pregnant, so I'm not the one who gets to decide. This is one of those things that must, must be up to the woman. Anything less is an encroachment on a woman's bodily soverignty.

Population

Aren't there enough children in this world, and what about those in foster care?

· There are two million vetted American couples awaiting adoption. Many of the children waiting to be adopted are waiting because of legal processes, not lack of loving homes. · The population in this country has increased because of legal and illegal immigration andlongevity not births. Forty million abortions in 30 years have not enriched our country.

Seeing as forty million abortions allowed women to be secure in their own bodies, yeah, I'd say that's an enrichment. And yes, there are enough children in the world- The USA is not "the world".

Make abortion rare · They say they want to make abortion rare but available. Why would you want to make something rare unless it is bad?

Lines like this make me want to be overly snarky. But, the snark-less answer is because "abortions are not fun". I want abortions to be rare, just like I want heart surgery to be rare: so people don't have to go through either. I wouldn't want to ban heart surgery just because it's painful and gruesome: same applies to abortion.

We want to make abortion rare, unthinkable, and unnecessary.

Unthinkable? Nope, I want women to have a full range of options on what to do with their lives. I want to reduce the rate, so I guess I semi-agree with unnecessary, but that is never going to happen, and it definately hasn't happen now.

Personally opposed · Why are you opposed to it?

This may not apply to me, because I'm about 80% sure that if I was pregnant, I would be on a plane to Minneapolis so fast it would make one's head spin.

· If it is not good enough for you, why do you think it is good enough for other women?

I don't want to go to business school, either, but far be it for me to deny that to other women. Women are not interchangable: are values are each going to be individually different.

I wouldn't wish an abortion on my worst enemy.

Um, I guess I wouldn't either (See above about abortion being not fun). But, if my worst enemy needed one, I would sure want her to be able to get one.

So you believe that a tiny speck a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus has rights over a woman?

· I don't believe in discrimination based on size, age or location. Do you believe that a child has less of a right to exist because they are small?Are large or tall people more valuable than small or short people? If that is the case, most women should have fewer rights than men!

Have you ever asked a child if they ate all the cookies in a cookie tin, and they reply "Cookie monster eats cookies on tv"? I kind feel like that right now. This "answer" sort of sounds like it's answering the question, but in reality, has nothing whatsoever to do with the question.

· Fetus is a Latin word meaning "young child" or "young one." But in practice fetus is becoming a clinical, dehumanized term for an unborn child. Imagine if some group tried to deny medical care for gravidas. Once someone figured out that was the Latin word for pregnant women, the bewilderment would quickly shift to outrage.

Fetus is the medical term for "the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo." This is just what it is. The Latin meaning for something is no longer the English meaning for something, and in multiple cases, can have nothing to do with the original roots. Denying care for "gravidas" would be bad, because they are actually human beings. Interestingly enough, if you're denying pregnant women the abortion option, you are in fact denying them medical care.

If "it" can't feel pain · Neonatal pain experts have testified before Congress that the younger one is, the more sensitive to pain they are and the unborn the most sensitive of all.

It's really hard to feel pain if you don't have a brain, or a functioning nervous system. They don't say who these experts are, or even when they testified at Congress, so I can't oppose that.

· Women feel the emotional and physical pain from an abortion, too.

Women feel emotional and physical pain from pregnancy and birth, as well.

Clinic violence · Violent individuals do not represent the prolife movement any more than the Unabomber represents the environmental movement.

Okay, then I'd recommend distancing yourself from them.

A few final thoughts on confrontational situations · When confronted or insulted, don't take it personally. Take it as an opportunity to learn, share, educate and inform. · Look at the issue from a "prochoice" viewpoint. Point out how our approach actually gives women more choices by addressing the reasons that drive women to abortion.

You don't give women more choices by taking a choice away from them. This is a complete and utter failure to see anything from a "prochoice" side.

· Remember that those under 30 have never known a day without legalized abortion, and it has been sold to them as a right, like owning slaves in other countries today, and in our country over a century ago. Challenge them to think for themselves. Don't be surprised when most of your listeners who expected to differ with you greatly end up saying, "I agree with 95% of what you are saying."

From http://www.feministsforlife.com

Well, I think I disagreed with more than 5% with them.

Obama and Clinton

2008-04-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

I promised to write a blogpost about Obama and Clinton's speech's at the ND Democratic Convention last Friday, so here it is. Although the internet is supposed to be about "cutting-edge" events, I prefer to make a slower, thoughtful post after having some time to reflect. (Either that, or I procrastinated all weekend watching "Penn and Teller's Bullshit" on immediate download on Netflix).

First, a small point about why the ND Democrats suck: they have absolutely no ability to predict who is coming, and what to do about it. To go to the convention, you either had to talk to your district representative to get seats on the floor, or you had to go to the ND website to get a general seating ticket. If you got a general seating ticket (as I did), they sent you a generic ticket, which you could print four times. There was no limit on getting a ticket; ND does not register voters, so you could be a Republican, a Minnesotan, anyone to get the tickets, and they did not limit the number of the tickets either. In this email, they did not include things like what you could not bring into the auditorium (you couldn't bring food or drinks, and you also couldn't bring a backpack; the last one annoyed me even more, because people were bringing purses way larger than my backpack). They only had four metal detectors, and the lines up to the metal detectors were a holy mess (for godless sake, invest in a few poles and pieces of string).

Now, on to the speeches. Obama's speech was a speech about unitity and change; how we had the ability to make the world a better place. He was full of idealism and seemed genuinely concerned about the state of the country. He was all about the pathos; and the energy he created was palpable, with the noise never died down. His audience was college aged-students, and this was shown by letting the college-aged Democrats stand behind him (something Clinton did not do). He was endorsed by Dorgan, Conrad, and Pomeroy, the Congress people

Yet, his speech did not make very many substantive points. He said a lot of phrases that sounded good, but he did not actually say what he was going to do to improve the country. And while messages of unity, and across the aisle bipartisanship, basically sits unevenly with me. I do not actually think that bipartisanship is actually a universal good; it's good if it's for a politically neutral goal, but when it comes right down to it, I want to see "my" side win- I want to see the progressive agenda to get actual play in the United States. I'm not entirely sure how I can compromise with someone who sees me as less than a full citizen, as the Republican aisle does.

Senator Clinton's speech, on the other hand, was heavy on the logos- she was very specific on what she wanted to do, and her speech was peppered with facts and figures. She did have some jokes, the clip that keeps getting an insane amount of air time about how she and her husband don't hate rich people, was actually pretty well received. I was with there with my friend PE, and he said "I can't believe it- she actually has a sense of humor", which I had told him before but he didn't believe me because of the hatchet job she gets in the media.

Her's did not create the sense of energy; leaving the auditorium I heard a lot of college-aged students talking about how she was too long winded and was bogged down in details. Her plane was also late, so by the time she came here a few hundred people had already wandered away.

As for the predictions, Clinton only mentioned the Flood of '97 once, instead of twice. Otherwise, I was right on. Obama expressed how Clinton would be better than McCain, Clinton did not reciprocate.

Holy Crap!

2008-04-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

Both Obama AND Clinton will be talking at the Democratic convention here in Grand Forks. I have tickets to go watch them, and I promise to blog about it after the fact (I don't think I can liveblog it, unfortunately). This is the biggest thing to happen to Grand Forks, politically, since...well, nothing really important politically happens here.

I'm not entirely sure why they are coming to the middle of no where North Dakota, but the most plausible theory is Obama is coming as a thank-you for Dorgan, Conrad, and Pomeroy for endorsing him, (and endorsing him early) and Clinton's coming because she cannot possible afford to lose anymore superdelegates.

Anyway, here are my predictions:
Hillary Clinton will mention the Flood if 1997 at least twice.
Obama will soft-peddle the race discussion, and instead focus on the economic problems.
Both canidates will avoid the reproductive rights issue ENTIRELY, unless they are going to answer questions (which I don't think they will) and someone asks. Then, they will say something vague about abortion being bad, but necessary.

Here's my hope, but I wouldn't bet on it:
Both canidates say that the other would be a ground-breaking president, and would be a solid leader.

I want to believe Obama

2008-03-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

I read the transcript of Obama's speech, and I cried. I cried because he said much more eloquently anything I've ever tried to explain about race relations in this country. I cried because it resonated with me. It resonated with me because I have had that cringe moments for family I loved. I understand the tip-toeing around conversations about race, because I'm afraid to face my own racism, and I'm afraid to expose my own ignorance and bigotry. I can remember when I was still religious, and when those bright moments of hope that I got from being part of a community were blighted by the horrible things the pastor said. And I understand the crushing cynicism that I fight against every time I read about this or that thing, or feel the sting of sexism, or hear about racism.

I want this to be the dominant discourse of American politics: not the sloganeering, not the focus testing, but real conversations about the problems in the United States.

Ah me, My Family

2008-03-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

Spring Break has come and gone, and instead of exotic Germany this year, I spent it in not-so-exotic (but still very pleasant) Tucson, Arizona. There I met my cousin, and my mom and dad.

It was fun, if less than productive. I was hoping this week could be used to spur wedding plans, but alas, it was not to be. The only thing wedding-related that is DONE is that I have dance shoes now. That's it.

But, it was interesting talking to my dad; not interesting-good, more like interesting-frustrating-as-fuck. My dad, whom I love, and I do not agree on the nature of reality. Not in a general existential sense (although we disagree on that too) more like what facts ARE. For instance, we started talking about me going into law school, and I was talking about how much I enjoyed Constitutional Law. I made mention to the Bill of Rights, and how it wasn't actually designed to protect individual rights, it was designed to protect states: that states had to power to write laws against freedom of speech and such. He argued with me that wasn't true, that states couldn't go against the Bill of Rights. I said yes, now, but that's only after the 14th Amendment incorporating necessary rights to apply to citizens, and that the second amendment still hasn't been incorporated (although that may change). He argued with me, saying that no, they were all about individual rights. I just gave up at that point, although I didn't do it as gracefully as possible, so he was still mad at me because he (rightly) felt that I was humoring him.

Later, we were talking about welfare and taxes, and I was saying how I thought that it was retarded that we were getting a rebate when we were trillions of dollars in debt. He made the remark that I won't think that way when I have to pay real taxes ("like he does" went unsaid). I said that when I have to pay "real" taxes, I hope I remember how taxes helped me get to the ability to do that. He said "Like what?" I said things like roads, police, infostructure, school...he interrupted me and said that he had paid for my school (well, he paid for some of it). I said I meant K-12, and he said that he paid for that too, my school and every child of lazy parents. I said he contributed to it, but he pressed the point and I just let it go. I made mention that me and hubby will probably be taking advantage of HUD and food stamps, and that those will enable us to be able to make it into the middle, and upper middle class, and when I'm there, I want to extend the same courtesy to those after me. THAT got him really angry: he was railing about people who abused the system, and that he had a cousin that purposely got pregnant just to get a larger cheque of welfare. I said that the amount of money that you get off of welfare is not enough to raise a child, so that doesn't make any sense, and referenced the fact that food stamps, for instance, only gives you 122 dollars a month to live on. He said that people get THOUSANDS of dollars a month of food stamps. I stopped there, because he was really slipping into the racist/sexist mold, and it was just going to piss me off.

So, we couldn't even agree on things that are not uncontroversial, but easily verified facts. Nothing is going to convince my dad that the Bill of Rights was about what the state could do, originally, and nothing will convince him that the max amount of food stamps you can get is 919 dollars a month (and that's for a family of 10). I have no idea where these ideas come from. Nobody in their right freaking mind would have another child just to get a bigger welfare cheque. That is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard. "Let's make my life a million times more complicated by slutting around, risking STDs, so I can get pregnant, risking my health and my life, for a whopping 100 dollars more a month (which doesn't cover diapers), and many, many more hours of demand on my life, just so social services doesn't bother me. It's an asinine concept.

My dad is a smart man, but I swear to godless, he can be amazingly dense.

Getting Married (legally)

2008-02-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

My fiance and I looked it over, and decided two weeks ago that we needed to sign a certificate saying we were married. I need to get him on the lease, and I need health insurance, so I signed piece of paper by the state is what we need to achieve both ends.
We are still going to have a big ceremony in September, so I didn't think that this was that big of deal. I mean, our relationship isn't going to change one iota, so to me this was like akin to playing word games with the government.
Well, we were supposed to be married yesterday, but our good "reverend" (PE, who got himself ordained online in the church of secular humanism) decided he needed to get really, really sick. So, now we have to wait another week, for PE to get better and so his friend R can come up for the weekend to witness.
Our parents were oddly weird about this arrangement. They both came to see the logic in it, but are all upset that they won't be here to see it. I'm like "we're signing a piece of paper and mailing it off, what is there to see?" My friends are also all excited about this, for some odd reason, one they refuse to speak.
Like my friend B, who said that this will be a major change. I said "What change? We're already living together, we slept together years ago, and we're not even getting the social recognition, just the legal ones". He said I was missing the point.
But the thing is, I was getting weirdly excited for this whole marriage thing. And I'm not even entirely sure why. I don't need a piece of paper to know I want to be together forever with my love. I also find it ironic that marriage is supposed to be about me and my love, and so far has more to do with people who aren't us.

Bait and Switch

2008-01-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading "Bait and Switch" by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was about trying to find work in the white collar world with any "gap" in your work history. In it, she talked about a particularily sadistic double-think people have to go through, which is to be "passionate" about a company that will hire you, but perfectly dispassionate about being dismissed.

All of the book reminded me of something that happened in my air transportation class (back when I was trying for an aviation major). My teacher, Prof. G, told us that we had to tell the airline why we were dying to work for them. I asked, "So, you want us to lie?"
"No," he said, "You have to really want to work for them, or else they aren't going to hire you".
I followed up with "What if you don't really want the job, or you aren't particularily passionate about it?"
Instead of answering, he asked "Then why are you applying for a job that you don't want?"
I answered, "Because one has bills to pay, including student loans, because you work a job you don't want to build hours for a job you do"
He said that "You'd never get a job with that kind of attitude" and went on with his spiel about which words to use in a cover letter.
None of the "answers" really addressed the question, but, it did hint around what was going on. It wasn't enough to be skilled, it wasn't enough to be a good employee: if you wanted a job in the corporate world, then you couldn't just fake it, you HAD to be the person who loved the company with an almost cult-like worship. We were getting ridiculously close to the Japanese, who work an extra hour to thank the company for their job.

Another professor, Prof Mustache, was telling us a story in the atrium about an employeer who would go and check the trunk of his prospective employees before hiring them, to see that they were organized enough. I was agast: COPS don't get to look in my trunk in order for me to be a citizen, and I didn't understand what my private life had to do with my ability to fly a plane (particularily for me: my home life is, charitable speaking, chaotic *read, messy*, but my work space is always organized).

The weirdest part of this is, all the other students seemed to just swallow this, without any question. When I questioned these job-gaining tactics, it was I who was looked at like I had grown a third eye, not the teachers.

I don't understand this: companies make their money from the labor of the workers. They are not doing us a favor when they higher us, we are engaging in a (mostly) mutually beneficial relationship. As a worker, I am not a "human resource", I am your wealth. I am not a "payroll expense" I am how a company gets profit. And to do this, I don't have to love the company, I have to work hard, and then at the end of the day, I leave to have a life.

I don't think that I will ever fit into the corporate workplace, and quite frankly, I hope I never have to. It seems insane to me.

My brain, for 10 minutes.

2007-12-03T18:47:00.000-08:00

My body my body what it’s a compliment don’t be so emotional too hysterical Jesus what’s the problems freaking ponies really ied ginmar and her cats ginmar and her trolls safe space on the internet, only on the internet why do they look at me like I’m crazy because I’m weird weird odd duck what are you doing what should I do I don’t know does that mean pointing it out is irrelevant women’s work women’s work not important labor is for the peasants not as important as the rich don’t deserve don’t deserve get ahead with sex bargaining power everyone needs to know how money works because money is the only thing that matters hate money hate it hate it hate it don’t care have to care have to care because money is just a thing a thing that means I deserve or don’t deserve work hard what does that have to do with the price of tea in china eric was in china sometimes he gets it but mostly he don’t bad grammar he gets grammar but can’t get over the idea that even though I can recognize a problem doesn’t mean I can fix it I try and fix it by pointing it out and being aware of it but jeeze why do you have to be so annoying everyone’s eyeballs rolled at the same time being someone’s wife is not the most important thing in the world Spanish teacher’s done it twice now why do you care about the mouthbreathers because because because the mouthbreathers are people, people who think I’m not as important because I’m not hot because I’m female because I’m liberal because I’m atheist because I’m annoying not a closet feminist well it’s okay to be feminist just don’t act on it don’t act on communism un-American of course capitalism is the only way to run a country of course we need federalism no questions no questions I like guns I like guns I don’t like justice system I don’t like cops I don’t like military death destruction death I own my body my body my body damned religion damned religion says I don’t own my own body it’s mine why do you talk about this like you care about babies when was the last time you elected higher taxes why is everyone so cynical why aren’t I I hate makeup I don’t like to wear it I don’t like my hair long Brandon likes my hair long I like to look pretty what the hell is pretty why do I care if someone finds me pretty my friends like me even if they don’t think I’m pretty why can’t I accept that why do I care if I’m pretty pretty is the patriarchy I still like to be pretty I can’t think of what I think pretty would be if I wasn’t sexist would pretty be me I like my breasts I would never get surgery I hate the thought of a diet you can pry my chocolate out of my cold dead hands fat means your lazy and a glutton and don’t work out and therefore are worthless worthless ugly lazy stupid glutton poor dumb bitch cunt whore pussy weak stupid you think your smart but your just lying liar you just want all of your characters to be female why the fuck can they say that when they have dozens and hundreds and millions of white guy characters to choose from self-righteous stupid bastards wouldn’t know how to write a female character you live around females why don’t you know them why do people interrupt me ignore me when I talk assholes say the same thing I just said five seconds ago why does he get the praise I am important I AM IMPORTANT I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY GODDAMNED IT AND IT”S IMPORTANT AND IT’S ABOUT WOMEN AND THINGS ABOUT WOMEN ARE IMPORTANT choices don’t exist in a fucking vacuum and no it’s not that much different to say “modesty” instead of “licentiousness” and even if I’m not beautiful I’m not there for you and stupid cultural script and miniskirts do not make me less valuable and if I want to go around naked that does not say anything whatsoever about what kind of person I am and why can’t you get over yourself and no Christianity Judaism and Muslim are not that damned different and no I will not join your racist talk because yes they treat their women horribly but guess what asshole so do you and you don’t have to leer you enjoy it and not because it’s natural or some bullshit like that but because you like to have power over someone particularly women and you have a nice little justification even though sex is bad bad bad and you can’t admit that you want it must not want it so I’m bad because I’m making you think of sex sex you can’t have sex that you shouldn’t don’t want and so I’m bad must cover up my body of for the love of Christ get over it not that important really sex is sex and I don’t seem to have a problem with thinking you’re attractive without jumping you or overpowering you but what if I do and you’re bigger than me bigger than me stronger than me pain pain pain because you can beat me like my dad beat my mom and tear me down and no one cares because I’m overreacting but goddammit no I’m not and just because I like to snuggle doesn’t mean that you just can do it with me at any time and I’m not a bitch and I hate to be disliked and why is it okay for you but not for me and why does the world ting that my concerns for frivolous or why does the world think that the frivolous concerns are female money money money and I like people I really do and I want people to like me but I want to like me why can’t I like me and I’m angry all the time and worried all the time and I don’t understand why you don’t understand and I have to be patient because THIS one might be sincere and not have an interest in the status quo and that’s bullshit lip service.

Oh, and I have class work coming due.

Christmas is a secular holiday

2007-11-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile, a friend, or a friend of a friend, will try and trip me up about the whole agnosticism thing, and say that I'm REALLY a Christian, I just don't know it. This normally happens when I try to do a good thing for the sake of being good, or I use a common colloquialism like "God dammit" or some such. The most recent example of this was a question on how I could celebrate Christmas, if I didn't actually believe in the birth of Christ.

My answer? Christmas is now a secular holiday.

Here's what I've done for Christmas:

Decorated a miniature plastic pine tree with lights (and put the angel I got from mom on it).
Hung pretty baubles from my ceiling
Made gifts for my friends
Have plans for making good food for a Christmas party.

The closest thing I have to "Christian" in that list is that I have an angel on the tree, but that is more because it has to do with my mom than god.

The tree, if anything, is a pagan tradition, and the rest of them are recent American traditions (look it up if you don't believe me). Santa and Frosty get more airtime and association with this holiday than Jesus does.

I'm okay with people thinking that this religion has something to do with this day (even though Jesus, if he existed, was most likely born in the summer) and that's their they thing. But for me, Christmas is about gifts, Easter is about eggs, and Lent is only good for Fat Tuesday.

I was going to right something about sex, but here's a better story for post #69

2007-10-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ditto

My friends, how they frustrate me

2007-09-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

I live in a conservative part of the country. Most of my friends are white guys. Most of my friends are total nerds. These intersections mean, most of my friends strongly disagree with me ideologically.

Most of the time we all deal: I talk about politics, they generally ignore me, we go back to talking about movies, books, and such. Every once in a while, I get them actually listen to what I say, and their mind changes, or they at least think about it. But then again, every once in awhile, they get really, really mad about what I have to say, and feel the need to respond to me.

That's what happened the other night when I was out with P.E. and J. Somehow, the topic of rape discussion came up, and J made the old stand-by of "Well, no one should rape a girl, but she needs to take some responsibility. What do girls think happen at fraternities?"

PE looked at me, with the "this is your area of expertise, I'm staying out of it face" and I immediately fell back in my chair.

"Dear lord!" I said. "What have I done? I just drank TWO WHOLE glasses of wine on an empty stomach, I'm probably buzzed. Not to mention, I've already given you the keys to my car. Two of you against me, and J, you're stronger than me when I'm perfectly sober. Oh, and Christ Almighty, look at me, I'm wearing a shirt that has a plunging neckline! You guys will probably be invited to my place afterwards, and dear Christ, I just realized I'm not a VIRGIN! Oh, I guess the only possible consequence is that I'm going to get raped tonight!"

PE was snickering, but J got really offended at that last part. He got upset and say "Don't be ridiculous, I'm talking about reasonable precautions, not locking yourself away."

"Oh, you seem offended. Don't being like thought of as a possible rapist?"

"To be honest, NO. You should know I'm not a rapist". J said.

"How on EARTH am I supposed to know you're not a rapist, J? It's not like rapists wear a sign. And I do know the statistics: I'm most likely to be raped by someone I know, not a stranger."

"Oh, so it's an access thing?" J asked.

"Probably, but the point still stands. You have plenty of access to me. How am I supposed to know you're not a rapist? You rape me, everyone thinks I'm lying, if I press charges, the cops I'll think I'm lying and I'll be vilified all over the city. So, what is a "reasonable precaution" for me to take to not get raped? And for that matter, what action makes me "deserves to get raped"?"

"That's not what I said!" J said

"What else am I supposed to take from it?"

I don't know if I got through (I rather doubt it) but the point of the matter is simply this: I did not get raped that night. And the reason I didn't get raped, is because there was no rapist present. There is no "personal responsibility" for my prevention of rape: the only person who can prevent rape is a rapist (and, you know, social attitudes and what-not).

Moments I love

2007-08-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

School's back again, and a few of my friends and I decided to go to Applebees. We had Angel-girl, Pretty One, Bear, and A, and Angel brought some new friends: C and K.

So, we're joking around, and I make some pointed comment about reproductive rights, and C, who doesn't know me very well, goes "What are you, some sort of closet feminist?"

Then, in stereo, Angel, Pretty, Bear, A and I go "CLOSET?!?"

Ah, good times.

Bridge Collapse

2007-08-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a couple weeks since the accident in Minneapolis/ St. Paul, but I finally have the time to write down what's been turning around in my head. So here goes:

Before all of the bodies were pulled out of the hypothermically cold water, before the smoke from buring cars were put out, and before the victims' families were notified, people were already blaming each other. Libertarians were talking about how a for-profit road system would have never allowed this. Conservatives were defensively screeching about how Bush wasn't to blame, that it was the state government's responsibility to maintain the interstate. Even liberals, who I happen to agree with, did there "I told you so" dance about our crumbling info-structure. This, honestly, made me a little sick to my stomach. The fact of the matter is, we aren't sure what caused the bridge to collapse. It could be that the river eroded the base more than expected, or that more cars than what initially planned for drove over it. It's possible that some construction worker cut a little too deeply, or a in not the entirely right place the night before. It's very possible that ignoring the infostructure did contribute to this tragedy.

BUT...

This was an accident. Even if we had the best funded road system in the world, and a team of engineers inspected every bridge every month, accidents do happen. They aren't perfectly controllable, and at some point, we cannot control everything. And, to start talking about who was at fault, before the search was at over seemed to me to be cold. We, everyone in the blogsphere, should have been expressing condolences, not pointing fingers at everyone else. Eventually, we should have the discussion and debate about taxes and inforstructure, but during the initial shock is NOT the time.

There were another group of people talking that filled me with rage. In any disaster, there are those who pop up with the stories of "I should have been there too", and then claim a guardian angel, god, whatever stopped them. I always want to go "Where was the victim's guardian angel? Why weren't they important enought to save, you selfish moron?" I always get some unsatisfying answer to the effect of "god's mysteries" and what-not, which is wholly unsatisfying to me.

My friend J, for instance, was supposed to be on that bridge. Every day, at that time, he would be driving home from school. That day, his friend A was in town, and they choose to stay in and drink as opposed to him going to class. That decision probably kept him from the bottom of the Mississippi.

Did god tell him to go drinking? Did god spare his life, the life of someone who doesn't even believe in god? OR, was it just dumb fucking luck?

All of these things, the blaming, the thanking god, everything, comes from the fact that we think that we can, or someone is, in control of everything. Which is not true, life is full of things that make no rhyme or reason. It is not ordered, it is not controllable, it is chaotic, and there are many small, seemingly pointless decisions that do effect where I life is going, and that have effected where our life is now. We cannot see all the consequences of all our decisions, and we can't stop every bad thing from happening, any more than we can stop every good thing from happening. All we can do is try to minimize the harm in the world, which is important in and of itself.

So, I call for sympathy before we call for blame.

Non-Political Rant

2007-07-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

The other night, me and a couple of friends went and saw "The Transformers". I did not want to see this movie. The fact is that as a child I loved the stupid show and the toys that came with it. As an adult (more or less) I am embarrassed I loved the half hour thin excuse for a commercial. Still, even though the television show was a nonsensical show with a weak motivation for robots to fight each other, the nostalgia was something I didn't want to be messed with. As was said by a commenter over at Punkassblog, "If you were born past 1975, your childhood was sponsored by Viacom, Mattel, and Hasboro".

But, my fiancé and his friends saw the movie, and he told me I should go see it. He swore to me up and down that the movie was much better than the trailers showed, and it had actual plot and character development. So, with some hope, I ponied up the $5.75 and went and saw the matinee.

It didn't start out too bad...a group of Air Force Special Forces joking around the Iraq desert and the evil Decepticons come and blow the hell out of them. But, a plucky group of soldiers with the help of a little Iraqi boy take a picture and survive the attack.

Then it just got bad. It started flipping between characters without any rhyme or reason. And instead of furthering the plot, we get a lot of stupid car chases and battle scenes. And not only are the car chases irrelevant and the explosions contrived, they do that stupid shaky-camera angle thing that I HATE and is the cheapest video trick in the history of the universe. Yes, we get it; it's supposed to be chaotic. We never learn WHY the Decipticons want to take over the earth, or why the Autobots protect us or what really happened on their planet, or where the all-spark came from, or why it was on earth or anything. When a non-speaking robot that shifts into a Camero has the most development, we have a problem.

What's worse, the movie stayed very true to the spirit of the television show. Panasonic, Ikea, Camero, GM, the military, there were so many product placements in this movie that it felt like a 2 and half hour commercial, instead of the half hour commercial that the TV show was. Of course, these "toys" are slightly more expensive, but seriously: that ploy worked when we were seven and hopped up on sugar but as adults, I hope we aren't that stupid.

All in all, a waste of 3 hours, 6 bucks, and a few minutes on my Verizon phone explaining the words "plot" and "character development" to my fiancé.

Zombies

2007-07-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing my friends talk about way too much (aside from Dungeons and Dragons) is what we would ever do if there was a zombie attack. Now, all of us may be a little off, and perhaps possess less than mainstream social abilities*, but we are all perfectly sane**. We know that zombies do not exist. Yet, we spend time talking about this stuff: figuring out side routes we know so that we can avoid lots of people, we know how to meet up, we've mapped out ways to get to the airport and fly out (if we needed to), we've talked about which buildings would be the best to hole up in***, who would do what, what we would do for water, et cetera et cetera. We all think we'd probably do okay in a zombie invasion, mainly because a) we have a lot of combined survival skills and b) we have more firearms and armor mints in three apartments than Luxemburg.

My mom says that she did that a lot as a young adult as well, only instead of zombies, it was Martians.

I have no idea what drives us to talk about this stuff, but my suspicion is that we talk about this stuff because we won't talk about something else. We talk about end-of-world scenarios because it's more pleasant and fun to think about zombies than terrorists, or our government. It's better think of a break down in society coming from fantasy than something that could actually happen. I think my Cold War era mother did the same thing with Martians: better Martians than the Russians or the US. If zombies don't exist, and Martians don't exist, than society is not going to break down. We don't ever have to mention the idea of society ever breaking down, or face what might realistically happen. But yet...we're prepared. We have a contingency plans. We are strong, and we know we can do. We don't build bomb shelters, we collect guns.

And just like the bomb shelters of our parents, all the guns in the world won't truly protect us from another terrorist attack, or an attack from our government. Our rifles would be like pea shooters against tanks. And no matter how well we know first aid, if we are hit by jet plane we are dead, or probably maimed for the rest of our lives.

*Probably as a side-effect of too much gaming and too little television

**And have the psychiatrists documentation to prove it.

***Right now, it's split between Wal-Mart and Cabalas. Both have ammunition, both have lots of food, both have no windows, and easily re-enforceable front doors, and lots of things to enforce them with. Cabalas has more weapons, but Wal-Mart has more food. In a pinch, we could go to a casino for the same reason.

Hedonism

2007-06-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

My parents and my fiance parents are meeting for the first time this weekend. If I believed in god, I'd be praying to it right now.

Realistically, I shouldn't be TOO worried. My parents and future parents in-laws have more in common than my parents have with me, not the least of which being the Christian thing.

In hindsight, I should have realized that I was never going to be able to stick with the Christian thing. Even if there was even any good evidence to suggest that the Christian god existed, I would have never worshipped him anyway. For the same reason that I tend to reject the atheistic Vulcan-like materialistic logic, I reject the Christians anti-materialist, "transcendent" mindset. I love the pleasures of the flesh, and I feel the most spirtual, the most connected to others when I'm enjoying them. I love my senses. I love feeling satin and lace, soft cotton and silk. More than that, I love the feeling of flesh; holding hands, hugging, kissing... I love sex. I love the electric feeling running down my spine when my lover runs his hand down my side and settles in the small of my back. I love the radiating body heat when we snuggle close together, and the feeling of his pulse, reverberating against my flesh.

I love tastes. I love sucking on chocolate: letting it melt on on my fingers and how it dribbles over my tongue. I love fresh fruit, and the way its juices get my hand sticky. I love how juices explode all over my mouth when I first bite into them. I love well-prepared meals: how they are works of art for my tongue instead of my eyes or ears.

I love noises: music playing, whispered words in the dark, shouts from a friend across the way, wind whipping through the trees.

I love looking at things: works of art, reading books, but just examining things closely as well. I like to look at things under a microscope, or through a telescope. When I was a child, I used to amuse myself for hours watching ants crawl over blades of grass.

Christianity isn't about any of these pleasures. I can remember one time, when I was about 10, I brought a bright red balloon to church. I wasn't allowed to bring it into the sanctuary, because "balloons don't belong in church".

Another time, about the same age, at Bible camp I wore a pretty blue, off-the shoulder sun dress. It was pretty skimpy, but it was hot, and I hadn't even developed identifiable sexaul characteristics. I was treated, in front of everyone, to a lecture about how people can be identified on what they wear, and if you dress "dirty" you can expect others to treat you this way. Even as a little kid, this made no sense to me.

I like the "If it hurts no one, go ahead and do it" philosophy. Christianity says that things that don't hurt anyone hurt some intangible father figure that seems to be an evil fuck most of the time (I've read my Bible, Old Testament god's an asshole). This is all we have, we might as well make the most of it. And what we have is nueral impulses that allow us to interact with this world and pleasure-indusing hormones. We should use them.

Capitalism sucks

2007-06-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

*This is going to be meandering, and probably not going to go anywhere, so if you keep reading, don't say I didn't warn you.

I just learned about the freegan movement. Basically, it seeks to minimize consumption and ones participation in a capitalistic system. I think this is an awesome idea, but hopelessly improbable. It'll probably go the way of the Hippie communes in a little while.

But some days, I really wish that I could join them. I wish I never had to touch another dollar, or look at numbers on paper representing some electronic money that I owe or have somewhere in the ether.

Last spring, I took microeconomics. The very first day in class, I'm sitting in the front row, my laptop open to faithfully type down the notes of the day. This was the class that was going to teach me how capitalism works: how current injustices are a result of a misapplication of capitalism, and are not inheirant to it. This was the class that was going to turn me from my godless socialist ways.

Okay, not really. I went into class thinking that this was a waste of a perfectly good hour that I could be sleeping. I had to take the class for my major. The first day of class, I was sitting in the front row waiting to take notes, but that's because I wanted to get the material, take the test, and not have to be there again.

First day the teacher's giving his lecture, saying that everyone in the United States is a capitalist, that no one is a socialist. I raise my little hand and say "No, I'm a socialist...There's a socialist party in the United States." I was duly ignored, like most of the time.

I stopped going, shortly after the forth class that made me want to chuck my laptop at the teacher. The entire CLASS is based on false premises, not the least of which being that people are inheirantly selfish.

One of the more interesting classes in my memory was when we were learning about the Prisoner's dilema. (Which I had already learned of in philosophy). For those of you unfamiliar (and too lazy to click over) the, short version of this story is that there are 2 prisoners, A and B. A or B can turn the other one in. If both keep silent, both go free. If one turns the other one in, the one who turned the other in goes free, the other one goes to jail for 10 years. If they both turn each other in, they both get 5 years.

So the teacher asks "What would you do in this situation?" After about 3 minutes of no one answering, I raise my hand.

"Did I do the crime?" I asked.
"That's not relevant to discussion." He answered.
"Yes it is" I said. "If I did the crime, I would confess. If I didn't, I wouldn't".
"Yeah, well confessing isn't an option" He said. "No one would confess"
"It is an option, and people confess all the time".
"Well, it doesn't work that way. Most people would implicate the other one".

I went back to my internet.

On the last day to drop, he invited everyone to come take a look at their grades. I went into his office.

The first thing he says is "Well, you haven't been attending classes, so you should think about dropping". He then looks at my grade and says "Oh, it seems you have a 92 in class...but it'd be higher if you started attending class".

I smiled, and said thank you.

Going back to my original title, I didn't learn much from class that I wasn't already aware of, but I did find out that capitalism really is the horrible, stupid philosophy that really does bring out the most selfish, greedy characteristics in human and rewards them.

Weddings and Feminism

2007-06-14T18:43:00.001-07:00

Engagement, weddings, and marriages are popping up on the blogsphere again, and whether or not it's possible to engage in a traditionally anti-feminist institution in a feminist manner. Pandagon,(with an additional follow-up) Feministe, and Hugo have some thought-provoking posts (and really interesting threads, if you ignore the trolls).

This is highly relevant to me, because I did recently get engaged, and I am worried about buying into an anti-feminist tradition. I am worried that I am going to fall into traditional gender roles, and I am worried about supporting the historical aspects of marriage that I find entirely distasteful. I am trying to mitigate the harm I may cause by getting married, but is that really enough?

And, the first link to Pandagon is starting to convince me that I cannot get away from this, because of ignorance of the traditions in the first place. This is embarrassing, and possibly a bit weird, but I was not aware that engagement rings were not exchanged. I did not know that it was just for the women: I assumed that everybody exchanged engagement rings, like they exchanged wedding rings. Not so, and they have a really horrible history.

YET, I want to say that I'm doing things differently. My ring isn't a diamond, and like I already said, we exchanged rings. I proposed, my father's permission was not (and will not) be asked, I am not wearing white, I'm having bridesmen and he's have groomsmaids, my father's not walking me down the aisle, and I'm not having it in a church. We've already agreed that we'll both work, and the theory is that our housework is going to be split evenly (and it's more or less working, so far). Are we egalitarian enough? Is it even a redeemable institution?

I want the social benefits. I want to be legally sanctioned-relationship, with all of the legal benefits. I want to be in a socially-sanctioned relationship, with all of the social benefits. But I do not want to be a wife, I want to be a "spouse". Can I have that?

To My Friend

2007-06-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

For today, I am setting aside cynism for the way that society is set up.

Instead, I'm going to express my admiration for my friend Crystal.

Crystal's mom recently was diagnosed with breast cancer. She's better now, but for awhile there it was pretty touch and go. Crystal felt helpless, as many would be in her situation.

But, instead of forgetting about her experience, she decided that she will try and assist those that she can help. She has decided that she will donate part of her liver to someone who needs a liver transplant.

The best part is the liver regeneriates. In about a month, she'll have regrown the part of the liver she donated, and she quite probably will save someones life.

I'm in awe: she is willing to literally give a piece of herself to save someone else: someone she doesn't even know. She is doing what she can to ease the suffering of others.

That is inspiring.

Unique

2007-06-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

My fiance and I have a very odd relationship. It is affectionate, respectful and all that other nice jazz, but ultimately the best word to describe it is "dorky". We are dorks: we giggle and flirt with each other every time we see each other like we were still in high school instead of the living together about to be married couple we are.

My friend, B, probably summed it up best when he said we were "unique". And "unique" is the kind of wedding we will probably end up having.

Our Wedding is planned for somewhere in 2009 (depending on when I graduate). I'm leaning towards a fall wedding, but that's not set in stone. Now, I wrote about how difficult this is going to end up being, seeing as neither of us knows a damn thing about planning a wedding, but we've both been working on it with due diligence*. The list that we have so far determined is as thus:

Will do:
-Brandon gets to wear a sword
- I get to wear a tiara
- I want some Bridesmen, he wants some Groomsmaids
-He wants his childhood pastor to officiate. This is will go through provided a) said pastor agrees and b) agrees to let me pre-screen the Biblical quotes
- I want to get married outdoors (or, in lieu of that here)
- The most important part of this wedding is the food
- We will write our own vows**

Won't do:
-I will not wear white. I think I'm plenty pure, but white looks gawd-awful with my gamers' tan.
- I will not get married in a church (except for the previous exception).
- No one will be walking me down the aisle, and neither will they walk Brandon
- I will not be changing my name. Neither will Brandon
- We are NOT spending 10,000 dollars or more on this wedding.
- We will not spring for an open bar

*Meaning, as the procrastinators we both are, that we occasionally talk about what might be cool to do.

** I don't think we could do pre-set vows. Our relationship is far to dorky, and I would only be able to vow to "love" him.

Apologies, and some not apologies

2007-06-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Holy hell, you leave the internet for a day or two and everything goes to pot.

Some of you have noted that I deleted my poem "Memorial Day". There has been some speculation as to why that is, and I just felt like clarifying some things. I deleted the post because some of the comments were getting downright abusive (suggestions that I needed to be "raped by a marine" were particularly not appreciated, whoever that anonymous coward was). Rather than trying to keep on top of these comments, and the weird places that the thread was going, I just scrapped the whole thing.

So, here are the apologies: I'm sorry I wrote a crappy poem, I am sorry that what I portrayed was not what I meant. I really should leave the subtlety to Keats. The point of the poem was a criticism of Memorial Day; I do not like it, I do not like how we glorify soldiers, and I do not like the violence we encouraged because of it. The point of the poem was not how all soldiers are evil, but rather, how most can and do evil when it is ordered of them. The soldier really saw himself as all of the things in the poem: strong, hard-working, capable, moral et cetera and he really saw his enemy as evil, amoral, a terrorist. BUT, when he was told to do something immoral, he jumped to it, because soldiers follow orders, even more so then we do (a le Milligram). They did for the Trail of Tears, they did it for pretty much every war, and they have done it in Iraq. And any way you try to pretty it up, the job of the military is to kill people. You can say "defense" all you want, but a bullet is pretty pathetic shield. And twice a year, we memorialize war: death and destruction.

I am not sorry of the feeling that compelled me to write the poem. We pick heroes of the most violent among us, and that should stop. If we wanted to memorialize people who sacrifice, why not firefighters? Why not Peace Corps members? Why not doctors? They are in the
people who do positive things for the greater good: they save lives, and don't kill to do it. But no, we pick people who kill to protect as our heroes, we memorialize who destroys as opposed to who creates. The people necessary for a vibrant democracy: journalists, educators, active citizens, lawyers, judges: we malign them in favor of something that every country on the planet has. For every war we have ever been in, the other side had soldiers too, doing the same thing that our soldiers did (if we torture less it's still a matter of degree, not actions). I will not buy into American exceptionalism, nor will I bow to the god of blind patriotism.

And just because my friends AND family were in/ are in the military, does not mean that it changes what their job is, nor how I feel about it. It just normally means that we don't talk about it. Oh, and along the same lines, I still don't think we should cut veterans’ benefits, a soldier may kill, but the government's the one who sent them to do it in the first place.

Life is Depressing

2007-05-31T13:28:00.000-07:00

Some days I feel horribly ungrateful. Here I am, in the "most powerful country in the world" with "the most freedoms of anyone" et cetera patriotic propaganda inserted here. On a more personal, and realisitic level, I am getting a great education, I never go hungry, I have a place to live, it is clean, it is relatively safe, and I'm never overly cold or hot. All of my physical needs are met, and more than necessary; I have cable tv and a laptop, and access to the internet. I have a guy who I love, and we are in an accepted, socially encouraged heterosexual, white relationship, and I have plenty of friends. I am fairly intelligent, or at the very least, I get good grades.

But, I am still...unsatisfied. I can't really think of a really good reason to do...anything. I go to school, workout, do my homework, do the dishes, read every once in awhile, keep abreast of the news...but it seems so pointless. I guess I'm going through a nihilist phase, but one that I can't seem to get out of. I want someone to tell me what is the point of life? What is the point to keep doing this: to live, work, play, exist? Why are we here? Why should I keep doing this day after day? Everyone just accepts that we should keep living, but I've never had explained as to why.

*sigh*

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2007-05-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I went and saw PotC 3. I went with the hope that this would be the movie to redeem the second, that this would be the movie to restore my original pleasure in the first.

Not only did it fail to redeem the second, it made me like the first one less.

The movie wasn't all bad: I'm glad that they finally gave some space for Elizabeth characters that involved her doing more than fainting and yelling at the guys. Elizabeth kicks nine kinds of ass in this movie, and she is highly relevant to the plot, instead of motivation. Not to mention, the show passes the Mo Movie Measure right away, in a conversation between Tia Dalma and Elizabeth.

But, a cool opening fight scene and a kickass character does not a good movie make. Movies require this thing called a "coherant plot" and "character development" and "resolution".

This movie suffers from what I call "too much ideas, not enough follow through". Since we have all seen the second movie, (or you better, or else this movie will make NO sense to you), we know the movie has to accomplish a few tasks: Jack Sparrow must be rescued, Will and Elizabeth need to be married, Will needs to save his father from Davy Jones, and Cutler Beckett needs to be stopped. This is complicated enough, but then they decide to throw in a few more objectives, like getting the Pirate Brethern together, and setting free the goddess Calypso.

To get all of these objectives together, they decide that they need to introduce 9 new characters. Rule of thumb people: 3 new characters per sequel. Any more and you get characters that are motivation and extras, not characters of themselves. If you name them, they better have some defining characteristics, and it better be more than "pirate lady" or "has a high pitched voice". Also, do NOT introduce a character just to kill them off, like they did with Seo and to a lesser degree, to James Norrington and Governor Swan. A vivid world is created through the character: suspension of disbelief is easier when the characters all have a purpose, and a personality. In a movie, death and birth better be damned relevant, or it just pisses me off.

Now, as much as I like what they did with Elizabeth's character, is how much I hated for what they did to Jack's. Jack has always been a little crazy, a little weird, a little cowardly, and plenty greedy. But, he was never supposed to be a villian. Jack has gotten increasingly unsympathetic, because he doesn't ever seem to have any drive to do good. In the first one, you knew he was in it for himself, but he always seemed to make sure that no one else got screwed over in the process (that didn't deserve it). I also thought that the multiple Jacks was unnecessary. I realize that his internal dialogue would have been harder to do without little Jacks, but I thought it made the visuals weird. We did fine before with Jack acting oddly, I thought it did better when we were like the crew, looking at him wobble around.

Finally, the resolution was ultimately unsatisfying to me. It's a third movie in a trilogy, that means a happy resolution. At best, I this was a nuetral resolution. The good that all happened was negative good: Beckett was destroyed. But Jack didn't have the Pearl, and the couple wasn't happily together, and too many people that didn't deserve to die did. I know that the sequel rule dictates that since this had enough projected gross (that it made) there needed to be a cliffhanger ending so that they can make a sequel, but this pissed me off none-the-less. There should have never been a second, much less a third, PotC movie. The story was complete after the first one, the following ones were just an excuse to make money.

No more Pirate movies for me. There is next to nothing they could do to make this better.

Continued Procrastination

2007-05-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

Instead of the studying I should be doing, I let myself get distracted by the wonderful Amptoons and his link farm. I was directed to a great essay about why "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, to put it bluntly, sucks. It reminded me of a time when I was growing up.

My mother, who I adore, takes advice from the worst people ever. Cross-country car trips (and there were many) were the worst torture that any living soul devised, because at that strip of interstate, way out in the boonies, after your batteries had long since died, one could still get Dr. Laura on the radio. Dr. Laura, who my mother admired and raptly listened to, would make the already intermibly boring drive an exercise in agony. This lady is a great example of a sucking- up stoge for the patriarchy; a self-righteous radio adviser, who would berate her clients for "shacking up" (her term for people who were living together but not married, which was delightfully beligerent and classist) and chastize teenage girls for acting/dressing/being whores.

This waste of human life once recommended to all of her listeners who were having some difficulty relating to their spouse to buy the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by the great charlatan, John Gray. My mother, easily persuaded and suffering under a "tense" relationship, went out and bought the audio book.

If I thought that being trapped in a car listening to Dr. Laura was bad, this had nothing on helping with spring cleaning listening to John Gray condescendingly explain to women that men just "need sex". Dr. Laura, at least, had commercials to stop the insanity, I instead had to live for "turn tape over to side B" and pray that the cassette was eaten by the player. I must have been 9 at this time, and had never heard of feminism, and I still knew this guy was full of crap. From his very first paragraph, when he talks about the Men-Martians seeing the Women-Venusians and then building and flying over to sweep them off their feet, my very first thought was "why would girls be waiting for some smelly boys to come get them?"

Reading the book now, after I figured out what feminism was all about, this book is just chock-full of stupid generalizations, sexist stereotypes, and pseudo-psychiatry. Men need to go to their "cave"? Women need to "talk about their feelings"? Puh-lease? Who believes this bullshit? Women should just give guys "quickies" because men "need sex"? This is stupidity that a child could point out. Now that I have education I can say that the use of men being active, and women being the passive decorative object is a harmful duality to set up (which, ironically enough means "why would girls wait around for smelly boys to come get them?").

Yet, my mom thought it was smart, and judging from the sales, she wasn't the only one.

Cock Rock

2007-05-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

I had the weekend from hell this weekend. One giant fuck-up after another. But, since some of it relates to aviation, and I don't want to get my PIC in trouble with the FAA, I'll skip to what's still pissing me off.

I went and saw Electric Six this Friday. I didn't think it was going to be that big of deal: the only songs I had heard were just funny songs like "Dance Commander" and "Gay Bar".

But, I got my first suggestion that they weren't just a campy band when they got to the "gender specific" part of the show. For the "fellas" they said "We are only here because of you, we wouldn't sell any records, we wouldn't sell any tickets, we would be nothing" and then proceeded to sing "Delight Me" a song, as near as I can tell, about blow jobs. Then, they went "For the girls: thanks for coming" and sang "Infected Girls".

My second, much larger clue, was when they got to a break. Since it still doesn't make any sense to me, so I'm going to quote as well as I can remember:

" Now we, we have developed a conscious (no, that is not a typo) here at Electric Six. We are now a politcal band. In the back, we have a giant 40-cubic-yard microwave. And we're going to shove 20-30 women in this microwave, and we're going to send them 20 years into the future, and we're going to send them to Crawford. Where Bush will be clearing brush. Only he'll be in an iron lung. And you're going to ride him, and you're going to ride him in his iron lung. Then some of you will be impregnanted with the next Bush. And then you'll all be liquified and feed intraveneously to the living. And the guys will sign a petition".

Aside from being kinda "Huh?" I think it's pretty obviously sexist. That was when I decided that Electric Six would never get another penny from me.

This would have been bad enough, but the guys that I went to this with thought this joke was hilarious. One of them for the rest of the weekend kept saying "let's get into the microwave" which still makes my skin crawl. Now, it's depressing enough that a band that I used to enjoy listening to is composed of assholes, but to hear my friends just go along with it, even worse saying I'm "overreacting". My friends can be right idiots, yes, but I would assume they'd realize why jokes about my death would be slightly out of place. But the fact that they don't, and what's worse, they don't seem to care about hurting me, bothers me. It bothers me that this kind of casual sexism is perfectly peachy in their eyes.

Still Mad at My Dad

2007-04-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

I am very perturbed at a comment my father made to me last week. A comment that makes me just as angry every time I think about it as the first time he told me. A comment that I thought I would be over by now.

My father non-jokingly, asked me when my fiance was going to ask his (my father's) permission to marry me.

Now, aside from the fact that this makes no logical sense, as I asked my beloved to marry me, and not the other way around, I am SO mad at all the underpinnings in this question.

First and foremost, I object to the sexist presumption of this question. Why, on earth, would my fiance need to ask my father's permission to marry me? I am not property, I am not a minor, and this isn't the dark ages, for chrissake.

Secondly, I don't need his permission for marriage: I am more than capable of deciding for myself whether or not I want to spend the rest of my life with someone. If I wanted his opinion on this union, I would have asked for it myself, but I didn't. Also, I am the one getting married: this has nothing to do with him.

Finally, I think this is so rude. He has no right to butt into business that is not his own. Especially when he asks stupid questions based on faulty assumptions (IE, the male asks the female to marry him, not vice versa).

I love my father, but man, do I hate the things he does sometimes.

People

2007-04-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

Over at the Carnvial of the Feminist (which everyone should check out, by the way, because it's wonderful) people are discussing relationships that they have with women in their life, particularily their family. And there is a thread that run through it, that I think people ignore a lot:

People are complicated.

Normally, I hate the clichéd(and normally misleading) phrase "on both side of the political aisle" but in this case, it actually is true. People are complicated and it is so easy to forget that, no matter your politcal leanings. We are fed a sugary lie as children, sucking on the empty calories of fairy tales and cartoons. We consume it with in larger qualities and with more garnish growing up so that we are addicted to it when we reach adulthood. This lie is that there are "good guys" and "bad guys". Someone is the ruggedly handsome hero, who represents and protects all that is good and holy in the world, and someone is the evil villian, ugly and decietful who wants to tear down good and glorify the evil. Aside from the obvious spongy nature of what "good" and "evil" is, no body on the face of the earth is like that. No one is completely good, and no one is completely evil.

Consider the recent masaccre at Virginia Tech: Cho Seung-Hui is being painted as a hate-filled, violent man who destroyed innocents and was opposed by a great number of heros.

Cho Seung-Hui is a villian, wheras others like are the clear heros.

Yet, that's wrong. Cho Seung-Hui acted villainous and acted heroic, but they were more than merely archetypes. Perhaps Cho also opened doors for people who had huge packages and gave notes away in class for people who had difficulty with a subject. Maybe liked to ridicule students in class. I know neither of these men, so I couldn't tell you.

Before anyone says it, this does NOT mean to justify or minimize either's actions on the day in question. Merely that any one action itself does not make someone "good" or "evil".

We so desperately want the duality of good and evil. We crave the sureity that it gives us: we want this person to be a sinner and this one to be a saint. We want this person to be a bigot and this person to be an activist. We want to know if we should love or hate someone. Shades of grey annoy us; and complexity overwhelms us. In "The Riches" Minnie Driver's character tearfully says "Do you know how much it hurts to hate the one person you love more than anyone in the world?".

My friends are perfect examples of this: they run the gambit of humanity. Some days I get so frustrated with them I could scream (such is when they ask for the 30th time why giving advice to women to protect themselves from rape is a bad thing). Many days they can be downright cruel to me and each others. Once, I broke down in tears at the table, and they responded by mocking me.

I have been asked many times online why I stay friends with people who share next to no of my political leanings, and more than that, are hostile and apathetic to the idea of activism. Some days, when I am frustrated and would like some more tangible support than what they give me, I think the same thing and vow never to talk to them again.

And yet...

When an ex-bf dumped me, there was one of my friends with a house to crash at, bottle of Saphire Gin, Spaceballs, and a face that looked the other way when I started to cry so I didn't have to be embarassed.

After watching "The Shining" and being terrified, my completely exhausted friend stayed up talking to me until 4 am and never once asked why I felt the need to ramble about hotels.

The cruelest of my friends never once questioned what possible reason I could have for coming into his dorm room at midnight to silently watch television with him, on the days that I needed to escape my roommates and/or boyfriend.

My friends are neither evil, nor are they saints: they are people. Disturbed people, to be sure, many of them with more mental and emotional baggage than even me, but people none the less.

I May Be In Over my head

2007-04-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

As my recent post had indicated, I am engaged. I am very happy about this arrangement, except for the random moments of hyperventaliting "Dear goddess, what the hell am I doing?".

I had another hiccup in this whole thing too, though: the wedding. I have never been the type to imagine my perfect wedding: in fact, when I had those conversations in my youth I would normally reply that I wanted to elope in Vegas. But, in this case, I cannot do that: both of our parents would kill us (or rather, be "very disappointed" in us, which for some reason still bothers the both of us, although we are adults). I joked to my fiance, Brandon, that we should just tell our parents that we're eloping, and if they want to have a ceremony, they could pay for it, but somehow we both know that that would go over like a lead balloon.

So, odds are, we're going to have a wedding. Now, this is a still a few years off, so I don't have to care too much about it right now, but I have recently discovered that I know nothing about weddings. I was reading Pandagon and how Amanda was amazed that her sister had put together a wedding in a month. I mentioned to Brandon that a month seemed like a long time, and he looked at me as if he was getting a child for a bride. Apparently, there is more to a wedding than mailing out a couple of invitations, renting a building and a few suits, getting a dress, and reserving a hall. Huh, who knew? Obviously, I am worse than the most priveleged guy when it comes to knowing how to make a wedding.

Since I apparently have no idea how to throw a wedding, could some of you in the blogsphere be kind enough to send me a list of all the things that need to be organized for a weddding? Or, if you are married, what did you have to do for your wedding?

I Hate this State (A continuing series)

2007-03-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

I am never, ever staying in North Dakota. There is not a single redeemable quality about this whole back-water state.

What is particularly irking me off here is its recent legislation. First, they passed a "Trigger bill" making abortion illegal when and if Roe v. Wade is overturned. But worse, they just passed into law a bill requiring parent's permission for pregnant girls under the age of 18 to get pre-natal care.

This is stupid, cruel, and misogynist legislator, and that's really all I can say about it right now.

Via the Bismarck Tribune.

Pro-Choice Voice

2007-03-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Last night there was a meeting of the Pro-Choice Voice, our one and only pro-choice campus organization. It was pretty good, we had a local nurse, a professor from the law school, and a professor from the medicine department. The discussion went all over the place, but it was expressly focused on women's reproductive rights.

The discussion, while awesome and well overdue, was disappointing in how few people actually showed up. For as "liberal" as college is supposed to be, this is a socially conservative state. There aren't very many people who support abortion rights. Heck, I can't even broach the subject at my table; it gets way to personal way too fast.

For instance, my friend, let's call him Mark, is a birth control baby. His mom was on the pill when he was conceieved (it does happen). Because of this, his parents had a somewhat rushed engagement and he was a magical first-born that gestated in 6 months. I once asked "Did your mom every think about abortion?" he got very, very offended, which I guess I get, but not really.

He was offended because I suggested that he could have not existed, and he felt that I implied that it would have been better. I feel this is a point of emotional contention: since abortion is illegal, there is just one more step that could have had you not existing.

The thought of non-existence bothers people. Yet, oddly enough, it does not bother me in the least. The thought that I was unwanted, the thought that I may have ruined my parents' lives THOOSE thought bothers me. Non-existence is a non-issue, to me, and it very well could have been me. I was not a planned baby: my mother was told she wouldn't be able to get pregnant for five years, and I was up in five months. Abortion was legal at the time, she could have done a cost benefit analysis and decided that her and my father couldn't afford me and had an abortion before I existed. And that would have been okay, because I wouldn't exist to care. The world would probably not be that drastically different. The "It's a Wonderful Life" is a fallacy for most of us, and very narcistic view most of the time. I like that it was available to my mom to have an abortion. Maybe not very likely, considering she had no money and was raised to oppose it, but she had the option. She was not coerced into giving birth by the government.

Mark was embraced and loved too, and my guess is that his mom had the option (seeing as he was born post-Roe as well). Maybe not a very practical option, but an option. And instead of seeing my question of one of embrace (Yes, my wasn't expecting me, but choose to have and love me anyway) he saw it as one of rejection (you were a mistake).

I am not entirely sure how to counter this emotional appeal of non-existence when talking about abortion. I suppose there is the other argument that, if there are tons of ways you could have not existed (a la Back to the Future) that have nothing to do with abortion, so please get over your existential crisis other ways than deny women the right to our bodies, but that sounds somewhat callous.

Any ideas?

I got Engaged

2007-03-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

As the title of this post suggests, I got engaged last week. No one was more suprised than me, except of course, for maybe my new fiance.

The reactions have been...mixed. Some have been happy for me, some of started crying fearing for who we will become, but most of them have been shocked. Extrodinarily shocked: gaping mouthes, unable to communicate, considered it a sign of the apocolypse shocked.

I shudder to think how our respective parents will act when we get around to telling them.

But the reaction that hurts the most is the idea that I'm a hypocrite for getting engaged. This worries me, because it may be true.

I don't like traditional marriage: it has been a property exchange instead of joining of people, or a religious experience. I'm trying to avoid this by not taking his last name, my father is NOT giving me away, and not getting married in a church. But, is the institution reclaimable? It's currently discriminatory: my gay friends and relatives can't get married while straight me can. There is still a lot of social capital wrapped up in it.

But, on the other hand, I do love him. I want to make a promise to him. Not to mention, when he has to move away in a few monthes for a job, I want to be told if something ever happens to him.

So instead of spending a long post on this, I shall ask you in the feminist blogsphere: is getting married anti-feminist?

What kind of feminist am I?

2007-02-21T18:30:00.000-08:00

Revisionist

You scored 83% Gender-Abolitionist, 80% Sexually Liberal, and 60 % Socialist

You are the Revisionist Feminist! You are, by far, the most
philosophical, the most sexually-liberated, and the most politically
extreme variety of feminist. You are very, very freedom-oriented. You
abhor oppression in all forms. For instance, your views on sexual
liberation and reproductive control adequately reflect your devotion to
personal freedom. Not only that, but you also feel gender needs to be
destroyed to maximize equality and freedom, because accepting
socially-constructed gender roles binds women into false categories and
places upon them an unneeded identity. Gender should not be a part of
one's identity, but rather an irrelevant aspect of their physical
bodies, such as their hair length or nose shape. Not only that, but
Revisionist Feminists are political extremists and feel very strongly
that the oppression of class society is a big part of the cause of
women's oppression. Basically, a Revisionist feels that cultural ideas
of gender, political class, and repressive sexual morality all work
together to oppress women, and the only way to truly escape this
oppression is to challenge all of these problems directly and
extremely. You are a Marxist, a Gender Abolitionist, and a Liberal
Feminist all rolled into one.

The other feminist types:

The Housewife

The Marxist

The Liberal

The Liberal Extremist

The Gender Abolitionist

The Radical

The Gender-Liberal

The Revisionist

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Gender
You scored higher than 99% on Sexuality
You scored higher than 99% on Class

Link: The Feminism Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Kindness

2006-11-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

I was pondering kindness the other day, or rather why it seems some people have it and others don't. Some people do kind acts instinctively: they don't think about it, it just happens. A kid cries in the store, they immediately go to him/her and see what to do to fix it. There's a bunch of homeless on the street, they empty out their wallets, or buy food, or at the very least, keep an active awareness that they are there (no putting on homeless blinders).

Then there are some people that aren't bad, they just aren't actively good. They blind themseleves to the poor, the suffering, and it seems like they could filter out any unpleasant sight or sound.

Then there are the misanthropes. The people who hate everyone, and seem to find glee in the misfortunes of others. The ones that are hopelessly jaded and cynical, and anything too sincere makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes, misanthropes are just idealists that got kicked in the metaphysical groin too many times, but sometimes they just seem born that way.

Finally, sociopaths. They don't feel anything towards anyone: everyone is just a tool to get him/her whatever s/he wants. They're a whole lotta not-touching-them-without-serious training.

What seperates these people out? What makes people kind and others cruel? There's the whole nature-and-nurture debate, but I'm thinking more of a less passive object way.

I posit that kindness is a reflex, like any other. If I went up to a person trained in Judo and grabbed their shoulder, I'm going to go flying through the air before that person even thought about it. The reaction has been honed until it was reflexive. At first, it felt awkward and didn't go exactly right, but practice made it sharp.

The same with kindness: one must train themselves to care and do something about it. AT first, it'll probably feel weird, and one might mess up a little bit, but then it will become more and more natural until it's not even thought about. You'll pick up the liter, you won't even think of not eating at McDonald's and you'll look and see everyone living in poverty.

Hey, if I'm wrong, what was lost?

Ah, My family

2006-11-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

My family is a bunch of kind-hearted, salt-of-the earth, God-fearing, middle Americans. They are solidly Republican (except for farm subsidies, when they are Democrats). Needless to say, they have not come to terms very well with my liberal Agnostic self.

Recently, they sent me one of those irritating chain mails. This one was another "OMG, Christians are being persecuted" ones. I'll quote it in its entirety:

YOU WONT HEAR THIS SONG IN A PUBLIC BROADCAST:

In March, 2005, this song was performed at a Diamond Rio concert. They received an immediate standing ovation, and continue to do so every time they perform it! Sadly, major radio stations wouldn't play it because it was considered politically incorrect. Consequently, the song was never released to the public. If this song speaks to your heart and you want to share it with friends and loved ones, please do. Then, regardless of our ethnic origin, let us cease being the silent majority and join together. Not as a particular political party, but as Americans!

March of 2005 was the first time this song was performed by Diamond Rio at a concert in Las Vegas. They received an immediate resounding standing ovation, and continue to do so every time they perform it! At the time, my thought was, "Everyone who loves America will be so thrilled to hear this song!" Although Diamond Rio has never before done a statement song, they felt compelled to record "In God We Still Trust." But guess what? Sadly, major radio stations wouldn't play it because it was considered politically incorrect. Consequently, the song was never released to the public.

So, America, see what you think. If this offering speaks to your heart and you feel to share it with friends and loved ones, please do. Many of us feel great concern with the movement of a dissident minority to eliminate God from the face of America! If they succeed, it will destroy the very principles upon which our nation was founded. Are we going to allow this to happen? What would that be like? More importantly..how would you feel?

Regardless of our ethnic origin, let us cease being the silent majority and join together. Not as a particular political party, but as Americans! Let us voice to the media and the powers that be how we feel about having God erased from everything that is sacred to us. If we don't do it, who will?

I rolled my eyes, but instead of sending straight to the trash, I decided to respond. Here's my email back to them:

Hello,

Thank you for including me in your forward. It's nice to hear you extending the hand of dialogue over the internet.

As you probably know, I'm Agnostic and have completely rejected the Christian faith. The song you sent me, aside from not being my cup of musical tea, was very offensive to me as a non-Christian because it implied both that as a non-Christian I was not "truly American". It also implied that because I was not a knee-jerk nationalist I did not condemn the 9-11 attack, which is also hurtful and not true.

There were also a number of false statements and assumptions in the song that I would like to point out to you. To whit:

1) The song did not receive air time because it was too "politically incorrect". This is false: the song did receive air time, but it didn't receive widespread airtime because it was not released as a single. Snopes has further information here.
2) The song itself had many inaccurate or misleading statements, the biggest one being the idea that this is a Christian nation, or was based on Christian theology.

You place your hand on His bible, when you swear to tell the truth.

This is no longer done, for obvious reasons of violation of church and state.

His name is on our greatest monuments an' all our money too.
It's not on a whole list of monuments, and it wasn't on our money until the Red Scare. (Ironic, isn't it, that a faith that dictates that one "give unto Caesar’s which is Caesar’s" put god's name on Caesar’s goods).

An' when we pledge allegiance, there's no doubt where we stand:

Again, that pledge was changed during the red scare.

There's no separation, we're one nation under Him.
There is a separation: many Americans are different faiths or not faithful at all. This is explicitly othering non-Christian Americans.

Now there are those among us,
Who wanna push Him out.
And erase his name from everything,
This country's all about.

The country is NOT based on Christian principles. A simple cross-examination of the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments would clearly demonstrate that. Notably, the very first commandment of "Thou shall have no other God before me" contricts the right of free exercise of religion.

From the schoolhouse to the courthouse,
They're silencing His word,
An' now it's time for all believers,
To make our voices heard.

This makes it sound like Christians are being persecuted where they are not. Think of it this way: if the majority of the people in your school were Muslim and every day at school they lead the school in morning prayers you'd feel pretty marginalized. Now imagine that you went to the courthouse and ascribed above the wall was "All that oppose Allah are infidels". I'm sure you would not feel that you were going to get an unbiased court. The same applies to Christians: you do not have precedence over schools. You're faith, in the eyes of the law, is equally as valid as anyone else's.

I'm hoping to hear back from you on this subject soon.

Intellectual exercise

2006-11-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been almost a month since I updated. Time flies when you're broke and doing a lot of homework. Anyway, I went to the dentist. It was 73 dollars for them to take x-rays and go "we don't know what's causing this". Nothing like a good investment.

On an entirely new subject, I've found this philosophy game to play. It's called "Find the Assumptions". You take a statement, and then you figure out all the pre-existing premises that you need for it to be true. It can be something as simple as "The sky is blue". In order for that to be true, you have a number of assumptions: you know what the color blue is, that there is a sky, that you have the ability to properly see the sky, that your senses are giving you truthful input (which is different from being able to see) and that your individual knowledge of the sky is accurate. A lot of different premises for something that most people think are generally true.

This is a nifty little exercise, because it helps when you're constructing your own arguments and when you're listening to other people's arguments.

For instance, if someone makes the assertion that "Hard sciences (physics, engineering, medicine) are more valuable than soft sciences (humanities)" there are a whole slew of assumptions in there to make that statement anywhere near true. In general, the premise includes that there is a universal value that one can make a judgment, and that "hard" and "soft" sciences are significantly different.

So, what makes "hard" and "soft" sciences significantly different? As a person who did years in both (communication is normally considered "soft" and aviation is normally considered "hard"), not a whole hell of a lot. One could say that aviation is taught more by focusing on small details and then having to extrapolate themes from them, whereas communication is vice versa, but that's really only a difference in how it's taught. Another could be said that communication is a lot of guess-work whereas aviation is hard and fast. When people say this, it always makes me laugh: any "hard" science: be it engineering, aviation, medicine, what have you is about "guesswork" and "generally". Finally, the other explanation for this difference is that hard sciences are more concrete, as in they actually "do" something. You build a bridge, you cure a sick person, you fly from point a to point b, instead of writing a book or a paper. The next, obvious question becomes: how do you fly from point a to point b without the airport facilities directory (which someone had to write)? Why would you want to build a bridge without someone giving a reason? Why bother curing people unless you are motivated to do so?

If you bust the unspoken premises, you bust the statement. This statement is false, unless you more clearly define "value" and demonstrate a significant difference between the sciences.

And this could be for any statement one wants to make. What are the premises for anything you say?

"Mexicans are undertaking America".

"Academia is insulated from reality".

"Abortion is a personal choice".

"We should have strong leaders".

"Environmental protections are a good thing".

Anything you say has unspoken premises to make it true. I think a lot of disagreements people have about political issues are that they are short-handed. If someone says "we have a collective responsibility to our citizens" and someone responds with "you're lazy" we've hit a place where our presumptions don't match up. If someone says "The wage gap is not due to institutionalized discrimination" and someone responds "you're sexist" our presumptions are not matching up.

Moral of the story: people should learn philosophy.

Health Care

2006-10-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Via Pandagon, I discovered that Mexico has been implementing socialized medicine to impressive results (and hopes to be fully socialized by 2010). This is good for Mexico, and an embarrassment to the United States. Mexico has a less developed infastructor, fewer resources, more poverty, and still has better health care then we do.

This is especially biting (pun intended) to me. You see, I have a toothache. A very bad toothache, that I've had since last Friday. If I don't take ibroprophen every 4-6 hours, I have a pain that starts out as a low throbbing centered around my tooth. It then goes to an aching around the side of my jaw. If left to it's own devices, I starting getting pulsing pain around my tooth, an aching jaw, and shooting pain by my temple.

I know this, because every night for the last 4 nights I've been woken up by this. I then have to take more pain killers, and wait for about an hour for the pain to receed why they take effect. I suck on ice during this time to numb the nerve endings, and that does a little to stop the pain.

I have no dental insurance. I was covered under my parents dental insurance up until my 22 birthday (which was less than a month ago). I didn't know this until it was almost my birthday that I was losing it.

I've made an appointment, and they can't fit me until next Monday. They've already warned me that it's going to be about 145 dollars just to find out what's wrong.

I can't afford this. I'm swimming in debt and there doesn't look like there's anyway to to get out. My parent's won't help me: they think that I should have gotten a dental appointment in the week that they discovered that I was losing it (which was impossible), and they can't afford it much more either.

I don't know what to do. I can't keep taking pain killers forever, and if it's a root canal or something I'm completely fucked. It makes me want to weep, out of pain and frustration. My credit card is maxed (textbooks) and I already owe my friends 650 dollars (Not that much when you factor in that flying is about 230 dollars per hour).

I'm mad at everyone and everything. I'm made at my parents for not even having the decency to fill out the goddamned FAFSA so I can get some financial aid. I'm mad at them for not trusting me enough to co-sign for student loans so I have a lovely 14.75 intrest rate. I'm mad at the weather for making me so far behind flying, and at my body for not being healthier. I'm mad at UND for serving us food that's all starchy and sugary shit. I'm mad at a country that doesn't give a damn that most of its citizens have no health insurance.

I work, but I don't get paid much and I can't work that many hours because I have to have an open schedule for flying. I wish there was a job I could that had flexible hours, but there isn't. I don't get health insurance on my university job.

Worse, I'm exhausted and in pain, and if I don't get weathered, I'm flying anyway today. I'm so far behind that I don't have a choice.

I wish there was something I could do. But I guess I'm just going to have to borrow more money or something, because I'm all out of ideas.

UND: bloodsucker

2006-10-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

I think that the University is trying to leach every last cent of future money they can from me. Specifically, I think they are trying to punish me for hanging out with my boyfriend.

Let me explain: here at UND we have a parking problem. That's nothing new or unique; from what I understand most universities have a parking problem and this has been a topic of contention since I've been a freshman (and according to my cousin, for a lot longer).

For the most part, I haven't complained. I tried to go my freshman year without buying a parking permit, but it was impossible (and of the streets anywhere NEAR here you can't park on 7 days a week). Yes, it was a bit annoying to have to walk 4 blocks away to get to my car at night, especially when it's so freezing here for half the year, but you deal.

But it's becoming too much. I've already racked up 190 dollars worth of tickets, and I've had enough (and only half of which I "deserved").

First and foremost, parking permits are 50 dollars this year. My freshman year (3 years ago) they were 43 dollars. (As a side note, my raise as a student employee during that time has gone up 50 cents an hour). But, aside from the fact that the price has gone up at much higher rate than my paycheck, the number of parking spaces has gone down, and I haven't seen the parking areas being maintained. They are building a parking garage on the east side of campus, which will hopefully help this (in a few years). HOWEVER, they put this parking garage in a rather silly spot (it would have made more sense to make it centrally located: behind Tabula would have been nice) and this means those of us who are shelling out 50 bucks have LESS parking spots than what we did last year, for more money. The parking lot behind Tabula is still not paved, and if you live at Johnston/Fulton/ Smith dorm you have to go through an unlit area to get to your car.

I didn't (and still don't) have 50 bucks for a parking permit. "Shoestring" budget doesn't begin to cover it. Here's what I have received tickets for:

15 dollar ticket: Service vehicle area for longer than a half hour. This ticket was at 6 PM, and I was unaware that it was timed after that. This is an unmarked parking spot.

5 dollar ticket: Parking over a half hour at half hour zone. I had my car in the Memorial Union Parking lot to talk to student government. This took me longer than a half hour, so in that time, I went and moved my car to another parking spot in the same parking lot. I was still ticket

25 dollar ticket: no permit shown in a G lot. This was Saturday at the airport: I missed the shuttle to the airport and was running late. I didn't have the permit because I couldn't afford the permit in the first place.

Three 25 dollar tickets: For being in the visitor's lot for more than 3-days. The visitor's lot in question is my boyfriend's place (he lives at on-campus apartments). At no point have I ever been in that visitor's lot for 72-consecutive hours.

Of those tickets, the 5, 15, and two 25 dollar tickets have doubled because I couldn't pay them within 14 calendar days. 190 dollars total (to date), and will probably continue to go up because I don't get paid.

I'm appealing all of these tickets: even the ones where they have me to rights (such as the one at the airport). Not that it makes much of a difference: there is no clear procedure for appealing the tickets, and it's highly subjective: there are no precedent for whose tickets get overturned and those who don't. I also am getting the distinct impression that the parking enforcement officers are following me: I see the same parking officer at least 3 times a day.

I can't pay for the permit, I can't pay the fines, and I sure as hell can't pay the doubled fines. I don't know what the university expects from the students: we pay through the nose to not be able to have a parking spot anywhere near our actual classes in one of the coldest universities in the world, and then charges us extra when we're strapped for cash.

This has to stop. The parking areas should be clearly marked and the fines shouldn't double; or at least there should be some way for someone who can't pay the ticket right away to defer it with out the price increasing. I've decided to write an article for the Dakota Student, and pick a whole bunch of appeals forms. Every time I see a ticket on someone's windshield, I'm going to put an appeal paper underneath it with instructions on how to file for appeal. There needs to be some sort of written protocol for the appeal's process, and one should be able to file them online. Until that happens, every single student should file an appeal. If they are going to waste our money, we should waste theirs.

Asshole Doctors, a Conclusion

2006-10-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, I talked about my misadventure with an Asshole of the Medical Profession. This doctor, instead of listening to me and treating my problem, was much more interested in a (non-existent) fetal life and berating me for having sex. The nurse was much more helpful, helping me get my medication and telling me what would happen.

After I got my medication, I walked out to my car and found my boyfriend, looking worried, who ran up to me and hugged me really tightly before chewing me out for not waking him up. I told him what happened, and he got even more upset.

"I've had a UTI before" he said. "I could have told you what it was, and then you wouldn't have had to worry about it".

I was too tired to argue with him, and he was right anyway. I bought some cranberry juice (*sidenote* The nurse had recommended it. I still don't like cranberry juice), took my medication, and started calling up TAs to let them know I wasn't going to be in class (or lab). After I stopped feeling like I was pissing mustard gas, I did go and get a pregnancy test (that was, of course, negative).

The point of this little rant, besides to point out a particularily hideous kind of asshole, is that this wouldn't have happened if the doctor didn't think that shaming me about my sex life was more important then my health. This should have been a 10 minute, minimal stress process. Instead, it was long, humilitating, and high-stress, that still ended up showing more concern for a fetus than for me. I don't know if the medication I got was worse for me or not, but I do know that I was experiencing pain longer than the nurse said I should. I suppose, in the long term, it didn't really matter, but it still bothers me that I didn't get the normal medication.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for doctors. I have two friends who are going through the medical programs, and I don't envy the sheer amount of knowledge they must have. BUT, I still wish that some doctors would get over their god-complex: you're supposed to heal me, not moralize to me. You aren't the moral authority in my life, and it isn't your job to be. If that's what you wanted, you should have become a religious leader (and even then, I'm very free to ignore you).

Asshole Doctors

2006-09-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

Everyone says that living in rural areas is so serene. There’s no crime, no pollution and everyone knows everyone right? The people who live here are real, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people.

As someone who’s been exiled to the frozen wasteland and grew up in some of these small, “idyllic” communities, I can say that it’s a load of bullshit. Small towns are petty, ignorant, and full of people who were not smart or skilled or lucky enough to leave so they wrap themselves up in their self-righteous small fish superiority. “Let’s not talk about it” is the memo that everyone gets about anything, which allows the dominant culture to do whatever it wants, unchallenged. Most of the time it’s just annoying; such as the lack of any type of cultural touchstone (museums, restaurant that aren’t sports bars, concerts), but other times, the ignorance and hypocrisy is down right dangerous.

Biting Beaver has an excellent post up illustrating the problems of this ignorance.She had a condom break, and then the run-around she got in her rural environment in order to get Plan B. Read the whole thing, and her follow-up, it’s very enlightening.

I have never had to get Plan B; however, this hasn’t stopped me from having to deal with asshole doctors. One night, soon after I had lost my virginity, I was sleeping at my boyfriend’s dorm and had to go to the bathroom. And as soon I had gone, I needed to go again…and again, after this happened a few times, I started to urinate blood.

At this point, it was about six AM and I was freaking out. I didn’t know if it was a STD or not, even though my boyfriend and I were fascistic about using condoms. I was embarrassed, and I was in pain. I came in, told my boyfriend (who, in his credit, was half-asleep) and said “I’m going to the hospital” to which he replied “It’s down the hall...*snmph snort* snuggle” before rolling over and going back to sleep.

The only thing open at this hour was the emergency. Weighing my options carefully, I decided that bleeding in places that do not normally bleed while in immense pain qualified as an emergency. I drive myself to the hospital, and rushing in. The very bored looking receptionist goes “what are your symptoms?” I, attempting to be mature, but still embarrassed as hell about the whole situation, said “frequent urination and bleeding….down there”.

The nurse, perhaps trying to keep me from being embarrassed, said kindly, “I’m going to need to know a little bit more specifically where “down there” is.”
“You know…I’m urinating blood”.
“Oh,” she said. “You have a UTI. Don’t worry too much about it…we’ll get your blood pressure and the doctor will do a blood test to confirm it. It’s no big deal…it’ll be uncomfortable but not deadly”

I immediately felt better. The nurse looked completely assured that this was what it was, and lots of people have had UTIs. No big deal.

So I’m sent to the doctor’s office to wait. And wait. And wait some more. I’m in pain, pissing blood, and the doctor takes about a half hour to get there. When he FINALLY gets there, he asks me again, what my symptoms are.
I said “Pain, frequent urination, and blood in the urine”.
He then gets this odd look on his face and says “When was your last period?”
I respond “I have no idea. I don’t exactly keep track of them, since they are so erratic.”
“Are you sexually active,” he asks, horrified.
“Yes,” I say, figuring it must be relevant to the discussion.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” he asks.
“I’m pretty sure,” I said, taken aback. “I always use condoms”.
“Hmm,” he said. “Well do you want a pregnancy test?”
At this point, I’m pretty annoyed, tired, and still in pain. I go “Would a pregnancy cause me to PISS BLOOD? Because otherwise, I’d like to get that taken care of first, please”.
He gets annoyed, and says “Well, it may be a STD. I’ll take some blood, and test it, and get back to you.” He then storms off.

I’m left to wait in the doctor’s office. When he finally comes back, the doctor goes “Well, you’re lucky: you just have a UTI. I’m going to give you medication that won’t harm fetal life if you are pregnant. This should clear this up the pain in a few hours. Call me if anything unusual happens”. He then storms off.

I go up to the nurse, because I don’t know where to get the prescription filled. She was much nicer. “It was a UTI, wasn’t it sweetie?” I nod. “I thought so,” she says. “You probably got a medication for it, right?” I nod again. “Did he tell you anything?” I shake my head. “Hmm…let me guess, you just started having sex?” I blush furiously. “I’ll take that as a yes. UTI aren’t uncommon among girls who have just started having sex. If you just make sure to use the restroom after sex, you shouldn’t have this problem again. And also, this medication that you have, it will turn your urine weird colors, so don’t freak out about that. Mmm, the pharmacy isn’t going to be open for about another 20 minutes, but I know the guy’s already there, so I’ll ask him if he’ll open up for you”.

“Thank you,” I say gratefully.

PART TWO AND CONCLUSION coming soon

Walking

2006-09-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry, faithful readers (both of you) for not posting lately. The begining of the school year has taken a chunk of time away from me.

However, one thing has really been bothering me lately. First, my bike was stolen (thanks a lot asshole, I hope you like your 50-dollar, three-year-old bike with a busted back break a lot). Secondly, the weather has been wonderful, and I can't enjoy it like I want to.

I would like to be able to walk from my house to school in the morning. I want to be able to enjoy the nice warm weather that sadly will sensibly move south for the next season (some doubt my sanity in staying here after the snow, and because of my addiction to alliteration). Unfortunately, to get to school from my house, I have to walk down University Avenue, past many, many fraternity houses. And how do I loathe the frats.

Aside from the fact that I think the Greek community adds nothing to campus life and reinforces the status quo, I loathe the frats in particular because it seems I'm not allowed to walk by them unmolested. Stares are not uncommon, and neither are catcalls. Occasionally I get snide remarks or noises.

Although it shouldn't make a damn bit of difference, I am not wearing anything particularily revealing OR unflattering. Jeans, and some sort of t-shirt are my "style" as it were.

I don't know why guys like these feel they have the right to stare at me, or feel the need to make comments. It's annoying, and it shows a level of entitlement that goes well beyond rude. I have just as much right to walk down a public sidewalk as them.

So, for every random frat boy who's shouted out to a woman, or for every guy who felt moved to remark "nice rack" to a perfect stranger: stop it. It's not a compliment, it's not flattering, it's not nice: it's annoying, rude, and overly entitled. Quit pretending to be macho at my expense. Quit feeling like my day will not be complete if you don't remark about what you feel my attractiveness level is. We're in college now, arguably as adults, and you are still acting like you have to impress your friends by pulling the girl's pigtails.

2006-09-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

Pandagon recently did a post about poverty. Many people, of course, came in with their self-righteous, "I did it, so can you" smug stories of how the "worked hard" and made it. I hate those stories, mainly because they can't see their own blessings, just their own challenges. I posted about poverty before, so I don't need to repeat myself.

But one thing just popped out at me, and this was a comment by Flat Out Running.

My family has always been poor. It’s a socialization issue. Mom had 11 siblings and lived in tents, houses with no plumbing, and moved around all the time because her dad got odd jobs and went where the (hard, dangerous) work was. She married someone smart and had intelligent kids, and my brother is a manager in a department store, has a wife and adopted boy, and while they don’t spend so wisely as they could, they’re doing okay. Me, I got through college (parents contributed a grand total of 2k, I worked and took out loans for the rest of the more than 13k/year tuition/room/board cost - private school 20 years ago), worked anywhere I could making less than 12/hr, paid off loans, got into a loser marriage, got out, got stuck with some debt he wouldn’t pay - I knew that the battle would be long and arduous so I sucked it up and paid more than I should have of the collective debt, it was far cheaper than the alternative because lawyers are beyond me. Once all that was over, I got back into school and got a 2 year masters in four years, because I was also working full time on top of the schooling and could not quit my job for summer term; classes ran four hours a day for three weeks, with four three week classes per summer, and there was no financial aid available for summer either. So automatically I paid way more for my education than most of my classmates, who were married and could get by, or older than I am and switching from more lucrative careers, and saved up for it better than I could.

And now I have a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, and I’m still pretty much where I started financially, though I do have savings (small potatoes but it’s there) I’m trying desparately not to use. I have a temporary part time job and a roommate. I can’t even get a clinic to take me as a volunteer so I can gain experience because I have very little of it, just the fieldwork I was doing as a student. What I do not have that classmates do is the savvy and connections — it’s taken me a long, long time to learn about things like networking and being professional and sane, because my previous history taught me how to be codependant, noncommunicative, angry and helpless. And I have no network of family buddies and so on, like so many people do - no directors of clinics, or their daughters, on my list of friends.

I got over the helpless early; it’s the rest, the ability to travel gracefully in white collar circles and communicate with those folks, that’s taken me forever to get. I’m much, much better but I still have a ways to go. Working at nonprofits sometimes when I can helps, but as a wage slave in social services jobs, you still get looked down on. It’s subtle but it’s there, just like racism. I was taking karate, swapping office services for lessons after my day job, and had bruises up my arms from blocking kicks (I bruise way easy). One of the Junior League ladies noticed and got this horrible ‘poor you’ thing going - she didn’t believe the karate story. I wondered if she would if I weren’t low rent, wearing thrift store clothes. I’m decent, hardworking, honest, and no one’s victim - but I’ll never be Junior League. On the other hand, I am also not poor, but I am a gnat’s eyelash from it if I start to give up. And frankly, I’m starting to wear myself out worrying that I won’t catch a break, that there won’t be jobs to get me the intern hours I need so I can get a license and start my own practice. People who know people who know people get them first. Classmates I still have contact with who have jobs say things like “I talked to my mom’s friend who - ” and classmates who are unemployed like me say things like “I don’t know why I can’t get them to call me back.” Maybe it’s just the place I am - but I can’t afford to move, either.

The ceiling hurts. Can someone up there open the window? I’ll climb the outside of the building if I have to. Fingernails grow back. Please let me do what I want to do, so I can pay for the cost I paid to do it. My loans are due soon.

This makes me feel, by turns, like crying and then extrodinarily guilty. You see, for as hard as it is for me to make ends meet, and as much debt as I'm going to accrue, I will have the connections. I've already had internships I had from networking, and jobs I've had because they were a friend of my mom. I found cheap places to live because I had connections with my friends. The bank I bank with charges no fees, and in fact waived a few of my overdraft fees because they knew me so well. I am damned lucky, but should I be taking advantage of this luck? Should I take my parents' and my friends' help?

Simone Weil paid her parents rent, refused to eat food that the poor couldn't have, and worked factory and farming jobs instead of higher paying ones. She felt the need to live her morals: no benefits because of a random chance of fate.

She also died alone and young.

TAGGED!

2006-09-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

The lovely Happy Feminist has tagged me to completely a book survey. Since I have a huge blog-crush on Ms. Feminist, I could not turn her down if she asked for all my worldly possesions; so a short survey is no problem. Onwards:

1. One book that changed your life?
Childcraft: Once Upon A Time

When I was little, my family had limited means (or to put it another way, we were poor-ass broke). However, my mom still wanted to make sure that I was getting a good start in life, so she sold encyclopedias for childcraft. This meant that I got to field test all of the new toys, but also after she sold a certain number, she got a set free. Then, on top of that, she read to me every night: I had the book memorized (including where to turn the page) before I ever knew how to read. I think this contributed to my reading comprehension abilities and my love of learning, but the book also represents my mom's ingenuity.

2. One book you have read more than once?
The Handmaid's Taleby Margaret Atwood

This book still scares the ever-living daylights out of me. A feminist's nightmare, but really a nightmare of anyone who values humanity and autonomy. I get scared every time I see the parallels between this dystopia and the world some groups are trying to create.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
I absolutely refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it is impossible. This is like asking which is my favorite sibling, it just isn't done.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend

This is a semi-blashemous story seeking to explain where Christ was between the ages of 12 and 32. It is narrated from Biff's point of view, and it is a lot closer to the version of Christ I always thought of back when I was Christian. I laugh out loud every time I read it; it has some great dialogue and running gags (Oh look, a seagull).

5. One book that made you cry?
I get so involved with books, that most of the sad ones make me cry. But, the first one that made me cry (that I can remember and even though it's cliche) is

Where the Red Fern Grows.

6. One book you wish had been written?
The Dummy's Guide to Feminism, or "Feminism for Baby Boomer Rural Men". I still haven't found anything useful to give my dad as a primer.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
Oh, I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this one. I wish that most of the Bible hadn't been written. If it was up to me, I would cut out Hosa, Elijah, Isaiah, anything written by Paul, and Timmothy. I hate their work with a undying passion becuase they are the ones that contribute to dumbass things like "Women cannot have headship over a man" and "Women are less valuable then men (and given a dollar amount)". Ick, get rid of their hateful screeds, and I'd like the Bible better.

8. One book you are currently reading?
FAA FAR/AIMS. What, I'm a Avit 102 student, so sue me.

9. One Book you have been meaning to read?
I wish to read more feminist scholarship.

Well, I'll tag:

DVD Pirate

Instructor

2006-08-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

I had one of those humbling moments today: humbling not next to someone's strength of character, but because of the flaws in mine.

I know that it's wrong to be racist. It's wrong to avoid people because of different customs, and it's wrong to worry about someone else's skin color. But, I got an email from my instructor, who's name is Hideki*. I looked at his name, a name I could not pronounce, and the first thought that ran through my head was "I hope he can speak clear English".

There was immediately a feeling of shame. I went "I can't believe I thought that! I've never even met him, he might even be a she for all I know about non-western names. S/he might have lived in the United States for all her/his life and the only accent s/he has is a midwest one. Or, if s/he is from outside the US, they might speak better than you do".

So I call him up (it does turn out to be a him). And he has an accent, and it sounds Japanese (again, I'm not good with non-western). So the evil part of my brain comes up again with "You have a perfectly legitimate concern if you can't understand your instructor. 102 will be one of THE defining classes of your aviation career...you have to be comfortable with your instructor".

The other part jumps up "That's BS and you know it. You talked to him once on your cell phone: his accent isn't all that bad and probably the problem was with your phone. Step outside your comfort zone a little bit: you haven't been exposed to people of other races in a nuetral envirnment. You haven't even been exposed to many people of different races AT ALL, especially not Asian. Besides, how would you feel if a female pilot instructor didn't get any students because she was "incomprehensible"?"

Evil part: "You're going to say something stupid, and look like not only a newbie pilot, but a racist newbie pilot, switch fast"

AHHGG!! I KNOW this is not a minority's problem. My own shortcomings are my own faults. But it's just frustrating when not even knowing where to start when it comes to fixing your own internalized racism.

Words

2006-08-11T11:44:00.001-07:00

I was just thinking about words to day, and how we use them and what they actually mean.

Like the word "insult". I ocassionally lurk at right-wing sites, and occasionally post. I find it interesting that "cunt" "bitch" and "slut" are perfectly legitimate slurs, but if I say what you said was "sexist" or "racist" I'm the one being insulting.

This always confused me until my friend Pretty Eric pointed something out to me: when people hear these words, they don't hear a critism, they hear "a generic word meaning "bad"".

"Sexist" and "racist" doesn't mean that you are a horrible, evil person: it means you need to examine your prejudices and your motivations. If you say "all women are.." and I say that it was sexist, I want you to examine how you can say "all women" as if we were cookie cutouts. If you say "all blacks" I want you to think about this, just like when I was first introduced to race-orientated blogs, I had to grow accustomed to how uncomfortable they made me (as a white women).

"Mercy" and "gift" are other words that I think that people need to examine. When people talk about the "deserving poor" I think they misunderstand what mercy is. Mercy, by definition, does not need to be deserved. When Katrina hit, and people were talking about how these horrible black people were not "grateful" enough I clenched my jaw. Gratitude has nothing to do with why you give charity. You help those in need because it's the right thing to do: you do it for yourself and your own ethics, not other people's gratitude.

This is why charity is supposed to be given anonomously. Because, for some reason, it is still seen as a matter of "pride" not to get charity. The person giving the charity gets to be self-righteous and smug, and the person recieving has to be humbled if you give charity in public. The person recieving charity now "owes" the other. Giving charity isn't about stripping someone else's dignity: in my mind it's about truly enlightened self-intrest: you help others because they will help you when you need it. You help others because the world is a better place when others' needs are met. You help others to make the world (sap alert) a better place to live for everyone.

The same thing with "gifts". "Gifts" mean that you give it with no strings attached: it is an expression of affection and joy, not of trying to get something in return. When you give something with the expectation of getting something back, it becomes a "bribe" not a gift.

For instance, when I first moved out of the dorms, my parents said that they would pay for my rent. This was a gift, because they loved me. Well, that "gift" ended when I decided that the most economical thing was for me to move in with my boyfriend. This was not a "gift" this was a bribe: a bribe to get me to pretend to believe in their values.

It's the same thing when a guy takes a female out to dinner, not to be nice or give a gift, but because he expects he will get laid. When he doesn't get that sex, you would be surprised (or not) how quickly the female becomes a "greedy bitch".

We need to quit have an expectations that do not match up with good morality. We need to realize that we are interlinked, and what you do to other people, it will happen to you. Call it karma, call it the Rule of Three, call it Christ's call that "what you do the least of my brethern you do to me" call it enlightened self-intrest; the end result is the same: when we help others, we help ourselves.

Divorce is Wonderful...

2006-07-30T23:38:00.002-07:00

....at least compared to bad marriages.

I don't understand people sometimes. I really don't understand what good is done if people who make each miserable are forced to stay together. How is this helping children, how is this helping spouses, how is this helping society?

Strip aside all of the religious mumbo-jumbo, and social expectations, and all marriage is in the US is an elaborate contract designating a strong interpersonal relationship. That's it. And "traditional" marriage wasn't even a contract designating a relationship: it was a property exchange between a father and husband.

So I don't understand this "stay-in-marriage-at-all-cost" mentality. Why? What's so great about marriage?

I would like to see the divorce rate lowered, BUT I would prefer to see the divorce rate lowered by less people getting married. I think it should be much, much harder for a person to get married: for instance I think parents should not be able to give consent for minor children to get married. I think that engagement periods should be longer, and "quickie" marriages in Las Vegas should not be allowed, at all. I think that people should have a real idea of what they are getting into when they get married, and "shotgun" weddings should be illegal.

Marriage does not make you more mature, it does not make your relationships stronger, it does not make you a better, more understanding person, and it does not teach you to be a good parent. Marriage is a tool, that is merely as good as the people using it.

Help please

2006-07-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

My relationship with my father has not always been what people could call "good". (It tends to be a side effect when you are a controlling, abusive figure in a child's life).

But, he sobered up, and now realizes that he's messed up (although I'm not entirely sure if he knows exactly what he messed up about) and now is trying to piece together the family, albeit in his own, incredibly dense way.

The problem with this dense way is we tend to talk past each other. Way past each other: like not even in the same language are we talking past each other.

So, in attempt to fix this rift, I have been trying to figure out a book I could get him, sort of an introduction to feminism. Does anybody know any good starter books, preferably written to non-acedemic, 1970's men? Talking about the "wage gap" and "glass ceiling" "patriarchy" "mommy track" and "rape statistics" tend to make him confused and start his eyes glazing over.

Any help would be appreciated (and if it's less than 20 dollars and 1000 pages, it would be really appreciated.)

Why do you call yourself "Democrats"?

2006-07-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

*Sigh*

Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad have the senators from North Dakota since 1992 and 1987, respectively. I honestly have no idea how and why, however. I never hear much positive about them, when I actually get into a conversation about politics with the natives (which trust me, does not happen frequently). But, they still get elected, year after year, even though everyone bitches about them all the time.

Dorgan and Conrad are democratic in the sense that they support farm subsidies and that they normally economically liberal (I especially appreciated their support on the Net Nuetrality Act). When it comes to civil rights, however, they are quite soft.

I could go through the list of things that they are against that are important to civil rights, but the latest, and most irritating, is their support of the Orwellian-named Child Custody Protection Act. They both voted for it, and all I can say is "why?"

This act is violating some fundamental rights of a citizen. I know we still treat children like property in the United States, but they still have rights. One of these rights is the right to health care, another is the right to autonomy, and as Americans, we still have the right to be a CITIZEN in our country, not as a foreigner in another state.

If a young woman (and let's kill the misleading gender nuetral language, it's girls that are going to get an abortion: when was the last time a guy got pregnant?) wants an abortion, than I think they should be able to get it without running to her possibly abusive parents. It would be great and wonderful if everyone had a good realitionship with his or her parents, but the reality never works out like that. Girls who have a good relationships with their parerents go to their parents, the law cannot force girls to have a good relationship with their parents. Girls have been abused, thrown out of their houses, and even killed when their parents have found out about their being pregnant (and by extension, their being sexual).

Plus, this is a slippery slope from "notification" to "consent". As soon as you start saying that parents have the right to investigate everything about their childrens' lives, you start going to the premise that parents have the right to control their childrens lives. And that is something we definately should not.

I grew up in an abusive household. If my parents would have known I was pregnant, my father would have beat the every living shit out of me while my mom would have cried about how she failed me and I failed God. I have two little sisters: if one of them decides to become sexual, I am quite sure that it would be me that they would come to with any problems. And I would tell them my advice, let them decide what to do and then help them the best way I could. If they lived with me in Grand Forks, I would drive them, in a heartbeat, to the cities (or better yet, to Winnepeg), if they asked me to to get an abortion. I would do it, and I would do it even if CCPA passes, because I love my little sisters.

This law helps no one. This law is contrary to civil liberties, and honestly far to similar to another law about where and what people could do in other states. So, Conrad, Dorgan: why do you bother to call yourself democrats when you are a so opposed to liberal ideals?

ND Fathers' Rights Part 2

2006-07-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

Hmm, apparently, blogger ate my last post. I wonder how that happened.

I had a post up here with links and stuff, but I'm not going to do all that research all over again. If it wasn't for the fact that I am using public computers, I'd back up all of my posts. But I'm not, so, *shrugs*.

Anyway, in my last entry I spoke of the Family Law Reform Initiative, and why I felt it was a poor piece of legislation. Today, I would like to write about the Shared Parenting Initiative which I'm told is a kinder, more mainstream version of Fathers' Rights Activism.

I must say, I don't like this one much better than flri. Yes, it has less immediately objectionable material, but SP still has the joint parenting presumption, which is not good for anyone around.

Here is what the problem with joint parenting presumption: it is completely not feasible and harmful for the child. In amicable divorces, the custody is decided out of court, and most of the time it’s a joint custody. Even in not-so-amicable divorces, most parents can put aside their personal problems for children's needs.

But in not-so-amicable divorces, or even worse, violent divorces, the presumption of joint custody is the most harmful thing you could do to the spouse/s and the children. To be a child, forced to witness your parents fight every week, or if not fight, be tense and snipping at each other and to be a child is hard, and just continues to be hard.

To see one parent live comfortably, maybe with a new family, while you spend the bulk of the time with the other, watching that parent try to make ends meet and you have to suffer the lack of income, is hard on a child. A child starts to wonder why they aren't important enough to get income, why they don't get some of the income of the other.

And then, we throw in people having lives. Today's economy means that parents will have to move, nine times out of ten, if they want to get a decent income. What then? Do you have a bi-coastal childhood? How do you get the money for all the travel the child has to do? What do you do when the child wants to go to a friend's birthday party, but oh no, that's the week they're supposed to be at their other house.

What about children who do not want to live with the secondary parent? What about the children who are scared to death of their secondary parent? What do you do then? Tell them to suck it up because their parents own them, and therefore have rights to them?

So who exactly is the presumption of joint custody helping? The children? The primary parent? It seems to me that the only person the presumption of joint custody is helping is the parent who didn't do any of the parenting labor. It seems to me that the secondary parent gets to mess with the lives of their children and ex-spouse.

I think the premise of joint custody is that both parents have a "right" to their children. I don't think you do. I think as parents, it is your responsibility to do what is in the best interest of the child, not what makes you the most comfortable. And I think the law should reflect that.

ND Fathers' Rights Part One

2006-07-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I mentioned the oh-so-lovely Family Law Reform Initiative. The comments I have received have been interesting to say the least: nothing seems to bring people out like abortion and fathers. (I suppose mail order brides and Real Dolls would do it to).

Rob of SayAnything took offence, because he felt that I was being too harsh on Fathers' Rights Activists, and suggested I look at the Shared Parenting Initiative. I could understand his frustration: I get very irritated when mainstream feminism gets confused with gender essentialists, so I would not like the fringe version of my philosophy be what was most commonly alluded to.

So, this post will be about two separate organizations: first, the Family Law Reform Initiative, and then the Shared Parenting Initiative.

Flri was started by unsuccessful Libertarian candidate for Ronald Riemer (who was convicted of domestic abuse). The flri has 10 parts to it: some parts are less objectionable than others. I will show the complete text and then my argument (if any) to it.

1. Not withstanding any other state statute or common law, the following inviolate rights are hereby establish for all adults and children of North Dakota, and this subsection shall be self activating upon voter approval, and all rights for children, parents and married persons listed in the North Dakota Century Code shall be hereby enforceable as a private right of action against any person or government official, or the state of North Dakota, in either state or federal court, against whoever denies them these rights.

Translation: Here's what we want to make into law (I'm willing to bet one of these guys is a lawyer).

2. All decisions or actions under state law shall be gender and race neutral and, without exception, follow all state and federal constitutional legal and treaty rights, and any state or local official or court or state funded agency who knowingly discriminates shall enjoy no immunity from either personal criminal prosecution or civil suit, and the statute of limitations on such actions shall be 6 years. Any state or local official found to have discriminated shall also be referred to the proper authority for proceedings to either remove them from office or subject them to recall at the next election.

No problems here. Equal protection under the law.

3. All legal actions that affect any family right to children, home, or property for more then thirty (30) days must be accorded the right to a jury trial. This provision shall be retroactive for ten years. Any party not knowingly wavering a jury trial, may, within two (2) years of the enactment of this measure, bring a new action on the issues of property division, support, or child custody. But, if the jury decides that said new action is clearly frivolous or without merit, that party shall be obligated to pay the costs and attorney fees to the prevailing party. Any decision, finding or judgment by any court affecting any family right shall be solely authored by the presiding judge and shall not be delegated to any no-judicial party.

Okay, here's where it gets interesting. Divorce hearings, alimony hearings, and custody hearings are currently by a judge, and not by a jury. The only real objection I have against this is that a jury trial would be much more expensive, but I'm sure what this group is counting on is that a jury would be more sympathetic to not paying alimony and reduced child support.

4. No child shall be denied a right to either parent, without a showing by clear and convincing evidence that a parent poses a real and immediate threat to said child. No time requirements may be made limiting the right to ask for custody or visitation order modifications. And in a divorce, absent clear and convincing proof of an actual threat to the child, joint and equal physical and legal parenting/custody rights shall be the presumed standard. The parents shall agree on a parenting plan, or if they can not agree to such a plan, then the court must produce such a plan for them. To help the parents/courts draft a parenting plan, Child Protection or some other state agency designated by the governor shall draft, within 6 months after enactment of this measure, and updated every two (2) years thereafter, at least ten (10) generic joint parenting plans as a guideline for separated or divorced parents, as well as ten (10) generic parenting plans where the parents do not have joint and equal physical and legal parenting/custody rights.

Ah, here is where it gets a little bit more interesting: shared parenting presumption as opposed to primary caregiver presumption. This is where any actual debate takes place, and I shall write the longer objection further down.

5. No parent may be denied parental rights to his children based on a domestic violence protection order unless there is clear and convincing evidence that the parent poses a real physical threat to said children. In which case that parent shall be allowed visitation in the least restrictive mode that provides protection to the children. A spouse shall have the right to self-defense or defense of his children in any domestic violence dispute. Nor may any parent or spouse gain legal advantage or property by accusing the other parent of domestic abuse. Any parent, advocate or lawyer making or promoting false accusations of domestic abuse is subject to a civil action for damages, as well as costs and attorney fees. Any official, lawyer or judge who knowingly promotes false or frivolous claims of domestic abuse shall be disbarred for not less then one year. A person accused of domestic abuse must be afforded legal representation. All domestic abuse court files shall be open records. Where a pro se litigant is entitled to an award of attorney fees, he shall be entitled to his opponent’s lawyer hourly rate, nor can the pro se litigant be held to the same technical standard of a lawyer, but he may not use this as an excuse for blatant misconduct.

If you hit your spouse, you are a danger to your kids, end of discussion. This shouldn't be something I think I should have to waste space over, but apparently a lot of people don't seem to understand that if Parent A hits Parent B, a person whom s/he supposedly loves, it wouldn't take to long before Parent A "lashes out" on children. And even if Parent A never touches the children in anger, it is still emotionally distressing to witness your parent hit the other (trust me, I know), and it is traumatic for Parent B to be forced to have to see the abuser time and time again. Not to mention, the laws that this advocates for is a) too harsh and b) would take up too much time. A false accusation is already against the law. Think of the practical applications of this law: what would "knowingly promote frivolous claims of domestic abuse" entail, investigating every domestic violence case that doesn't have enough evidence to convict? This would have expensive, and dangerous consequences to our current legal system

6. In joint and equal physical and legal parenting/custody, neither parent shall be obligated to pay child support to the other. But, in non-joint equal physical and legal parenting/custody, child support shall be no more then half of the cost of caring for a child’s basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care on an average North Dakota family income as determined by the department of human services, and never more then 25% of the obligor’s actual and normal current taxable income. There shall be no additions for other factors. Nor may the child of divorced parents be entitled to more then a child with married parents, but the support shall be lowered based on the legal or moral needs of the obligor to support himself and other current family members. Child support can only be based on a maximum of a 40 hours work week, and shall not include bonuses, overtime, retirement or one time financial windfalls. The child support obligor shall receive the tax deduction for the supported children. Unless previously contracted for, spousal support shall never be required. Nor shall any obligor ever face jail or loss of other legal rights or benefits for failure to pay a domestic support obligation or debt. Nor shall normal due process and protections be denied for the collection of said obligation or debt. But additional legal/criminal actions may be imposed when it has been proven by clear and convincing evidence that failure to support has resulted in serious child neglect or abuse.

And here is why I think these people just don't want to pay their damn child support. With a presumption of joint custody, and there is no repercussions for domestic violence, that means that you have to be a drug addict not to be able to get custody of your kids. And even if you're a bad parent, the kind who locks their terrified child in the basement, the kind that the child is afraid to speak to without getting hit, the kind that routinely forgets to pick up the child or the kind that makes it impossible to meet any kind of schedule, while the other parent does the bulk of the child rearing are struggling to do the labor of child rearing while trying to make ends meet, you have a clusterfuck that is good for NO ONE, except for maybe the crappy entitled parent.

7. Where child visitation or support is ordered, the courts and the states attorneys must enforce it. Where they deliberately refuse to do so they shall enjoy no immunity from either prosecution or civil suit by the denied parent or affected child. Any state or local official found to have violated these rights shall be referred to the proper authority for proceedings to remove them from office.

No major argument here, just a small quibble: what does he mean by the state attorney must enforce it? That's not really their job. That's kinda a job for law enforcement. So, no, the S.A. shouldn't be able to be sued because you can't pick your kid up on time.

8. Married parties shall be entitled to all property and debts accumulated before, during and after the marriage, and premarital contracts must be enforced under traditional contract law so as to afford each party their full rights. No party shall ever be awarded the premarital or separate property of the other party, and no person shall be obligated to ever pay for the support of another adult human. Unless otherwise contracted for, all savings and pension plans shall be the sole property of the person who has worked or paid into them. And where marital property or documents are ordered exchanged, it must be done within 90 days of the court decree, or the harmed party may ask for a court contempt remedy.

Yeah, no. If you have a pension, your spouse gets half of it, or you had better have been paying for the upkeep of your house. The state has alimony laws because one spouse is supporting the other, and it's not nearly enough (check out how easy it is to get a loan, or a job, if you've been out of the workforce. Not easy at all.)

9. On application for a marriage license, the state shall inform the applying parties of their legal rights and obligations under the marriage laws of North Dakota. The office of the North Dakota Attorney General shall produce this information in a readable form within 3 months after enactment of this measure. Every marrying couple must also agree to a premarital contract at least 60 days prior to marriage. If there are no resulting children/pregnancies resulting from the marriage, then failure to so inform or contract shall make the marriage non-binding at the option of either party if an action for annulment is brought within 2 years of the marriage.

I have no objections to the knowledge of their legal rights before marriage. Too many people get married already, they should know what they're getting into. But, marriage isn't made to have children: marriage is a formal contract of a relationship. So, the two years thing is ridiculous.

10. Because strong families are essential for the well being and happiness of our society, and because of the concern for the ever increasing rate of single parent families and divorce rate, it is hereby establish the state office of Family Advocate. This position shall be elected at each general election. The term of office shall be two (2) years. Candidates for this position shall be a qualified elector of this state and shall be paid $1 per month with no other state benefits other then expenses. The legislature shall budget a minimum of $1,000,000 per year to be used by the Family Advocate for the functions of his office, and these functions may include such things as research, getting public comment, identifying and finding solutions for family problems. Remedial actions could include recommending, submitting and testifying for legislation, performing/advocating public or school educational programs, submitting court briefs, and any other beneficial and effective activity. No Family Advocate shall use this position to advance or advocate his own political, social, or religious agenda, and all his/her public actions must be fair, gender neutral and unbiased. If this office is to be vacant for more then 3 months, the governor shall appoint a qualified interim Family Advocate who shall fill this position until the next general election.

I would have no problem with the family advocate, but I think the rationale that they put out is specious.

Because strong families are essential for the well being and happiness of our society

Sure, whatever. I'll say that having strong families certainly doesn't HURT anything.

and because of the concern for the ever increasing rate of single parent families

I don't have any concern about single parenting, except for the fact that it is very restricting financially.

and [concern for the] divorce rate

I have no concern for the divorce rate. Divorce, as an institution, is great. It means you get to leave a crappy environment. Divorce means that you get to leave a jackass. Divorce is wonderful! The only reason I'm concerned about the divorce rate is it means that too many people are getting married without thinking about what they're doing. Marriage isn't something one should take lightly (and it also isn't something you should do just because you're horny: another reason why I dislike Christianity, but that's another post entirely).

And I'm not even going to get into their reasons (available under News Briefs and April). [channeling William Shatner]So...many...false...premises...so...much....entitlement[/channeling William Shatner].

So, clearly the flri is a bunch of nutcases. These people make my skin crawl every time I talk to them, when I do talk to them (see Me And the Mormons post).

The Shared Parenting Initiative is out later, as this post is getting lengthy.

Grand Forks County Fair

2006-07-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

This last Saturday, after the temperature cooled down to livable", my friends and I headed for the local county fair.

For those of you who live in actual civilization and not the middle of nowhere, a county fair is a random occurrence where people sell overpriced foods to raise money, any nut-job can put up a booth, and various homemade items go on display. There are also rigged games and a few not so thrilling rides. The whole event is so very lame, but with the right attitude (or lots of alcohol barring the right attitude), it can be an enjoyable day.

Anyway, there were the usual suspects: people touting snake oil (Mangosteen: we may not have an American studies, but look at the anecdotal evidence!) 4-H stands (The judges may not know art, but can recognize the Olson's kid!) and barnyard animals (yes, that means cows, chickens, ducks, pigs and goats.) Do not misunderstand me, I did my share of 4-H projects in my youth, and I rather like the some of the arts, but it is so...kitschy.

However, two stands stuck out in my mind. One was the "pro-life" stand and the other was the "Family Law Reform Initiative".

First and foremost, I was amused at the Orwellian language. The "Family Law Reform Initiative" is about the worst thing for families I have ever seen. "Pro-life" is anything but: they care about fetid, and that is about it.

I didn't get to have a friendly debate with the nice people, my friends were doing that "Please oh please do not do the feminism thing" on me, and since this was supposed to be fun for everyone, I consented. However, I still did manage to get a few shots.

First, the pro-life stand was actually ambiguous. With hope that I found some kindred, (or at least semi-kindred) sprits in this city, I went up expectantly with the "PROTECT LIFE" booth and asked "So, you guys are what, anti-war, anti-death penalty, what?"

Nice lady, glaring at me: "No, this is for abortion. More people die in that".

"Uh-huh" I say, crestfallen and nonplussed with the argument.

"I had a miscarriage. This is what my baby boy looked like" she continues, showing a little plastic baby-looking thing in a disembodied womb.

Recognizing that this was going nowhere fast, I said "Can I take these?" gesturing at the brochures.

"Of course" she said, brightening. "We've even got a banner you can win".

"No thank you," I said, seeing the homemade banner of Mary and the baby Jesus. "I'm agnostic, it really isn't valuable to me."

Glaring lady comes back. "I see".

I look down and see "Abortion causes breast cancer" handout. "You're going to want to pull this one" I said. "There is no link between abortion and breast cancer. That myth has been debunked".

"Well, that depends at what study you look at" said another random lady, popping in from nowhere.

"Yes," I said. "There are peer-reviewed studies that use the scientific method, and then there are false psuedo-science with a clear political bias".

At this point, my friend sees me and pulls me away, but not before I grab the rest of the brochures.

The stuff, oh man, that gets another blogpost all it's own.

The "Family Law Reform Initiative" I didn't even get a chance to look at. My friends cut me off at the pass, saying that I didn't have the money to get fixed up in the hospital after the guy took a swing at me (and they didn't have the money to bail me out if I returned).

The family law reform initiative is something thought up by the fathers' rights activists and are trying to pass shady legislation with irritating slogans like "Children need both parents". They irritate me to no end because children also need child support payments, something that these men are disintrested in supplying. I've met the man in charge, so to speak, and I've never met a more bitter, entitled example of a "human" being. 4, 5, and 6 are my favorite for the sheer assholishness of them (but this is another blogpost altogether).

I tell you, some days there is not enough alchol in the world to drown this away.

A Mostly Serious Piece on Pornography

2006-07-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my response has taken slightly longer than a day. Mea culpa, I got a job at a store (ending in "art" and beginning with "K") so I actually don't have as much blogging time as before.

Anyway, when I was conducting my interview with the protestors, they kept repeating my questions back at me, curious as to what I believed in. "Did I believe in god?" "Was I a moral absolutist or a moral relativist?" "Could I see how pornography leads to rape?" that type of thing. I feel I restrained myself as much as I could, but these are questions I would like to answer for the benefit of those who'd like to know.

In this entry, I'd like to talk about sex and pornography. For the purposes of this discussion, pornography shall be defined as the viewing of sexual acts for the purposes of titillation (rather broad, I know, but work with me).

Now, I normally tend to fall into the pro-sex feminism side: I like sex, and see nothing wrong with expressions of sexuality. I deny, vehemently, that woman are uninterested in sex, or have less of a sex drive than men. Any woman who has experienced an orgasm is secretly laughing at anyone who says that. This is a stupid stereotype, but more to the point, it can be quite dangerous (because people turn this into a weird sex-as-dominance, or sex-as-transaction, or sex-as-something women have that men want to get). And, I am quite strongly free speech, and I think too many things that count as "pornography" are actually much more about anti-sexuality squick: namely things like belly-dancing or nudity in general. There is nothing wrong with our fleshly body, and carnal delights are quite grand, thank-you-very much. We are sexual creatures, and a denial of that is an exercise in frustration. Sex is a wonderful, messy, intimate, silly, pleasant, sometimes earth-shattering, sometimes disappointing, lustful, stupid-looking, lovely hedonistic activity to do. It's better with skill and experience, it's better with trust and love, but it is what it is. Sex is an activity that two people engage in. Sex is not a "self-gift" in the sense that I'm less than a person afterwards. It is more like a duet, where I am lending my skills to another singer in a beautiful music (and the other person gets to cover up some of my false notes). Does the fact that I have sang with another person make this song less beautiful? Neither does the fact that I have had sex with other persons make it less meaningful when I have sex now. Pleasure is an important an integral part of the action: it is sole reason to have sex is for pleasure, both my partner's and mine.

To that end, I LOVE the PBR. As I stated before, they are the only place in town that sells some sex-aids: massage oil, incense, sexual games, and masturbation aids such as vibrators. These things can help with sex, making better foreplay, more creative sex, more pleasurable sex.

But then, there's pornography. Pornography gets weird, because it's no longer an act that two people engage in. Suddenly, you are purchasing the right to be a voyeur, without the direct consent of the people involved. In many cases, sex is not something that two people engage in, but it something someone does to another. Man fucks woman. Subject-verb-object. In homosexual sex, there's a "bottom" and a "top", someone who's getting penetrated, someone who's doing the penetrating. And then there's "lesbian" porn, where it seems every woman is two drinks away from doing another woman, while they wait around for a "real man" to come and "fix them".

Clearly, most pornography I do not think accurately reflects healthy sexuality (not to mention, lacking almost any artistic merit. Hasn't anyone heard of "plot" and "dialogue" and "acting"? I mean, come on, there's temporary suspension of disbelief, and then there's WTF is wrong with you people.) To that end, I support the protestors against the objectification of SEX (which they misunderstand as the objectification of people, namely women). Women who engage in sex are not being objectified, woman who engage in this weird human-object dominance play are being objectified.

Where we draw the line, is where it starts to get fuzzy. If I wanted to watch "Madame Bovary" and they didn't fade to black when the sex scene came on, is that degrading? I would say no. But if I were to watch "Barely Legal Teen Fuckfest"* I think it would be degrading. However, since we live in a free society, I am not at liberty to say what can and cannot be watched, in the name of free expression. As soon as I start limiting other people's expressions, it will not be too long before they come after my own. Yet, I still disagree with pornography that is sex as a commodity, and I feel there is a great underlying misogyny in rape porn.

So, I'm not overmuch fond of the north side of the building, but I can't say not to have it. I don't want the store to close; I just wish the selection would change, so that it was less about sex-as-a-power play and more like sex-as-a-pleasurable activity. And I think that's where the divide between me and the protestors: I don't like objectifying sex, and they just don't like sex as a pleasure activity. If my boyfriend (in this point in my life, I have no desire to get married) were to go into the store, I'd be "whoopee! New toy!” not an insecure mess that he didn't find me attractive.

I do not believe that pleasure is inherently bad, just like I don't believe sacrifice is inherently good. Activities that lead to pleasure, and have no other harming side effects (like a violation of another's autonomy) are fine. Pleasure is a good in and of itself. Sacrifice that leads to betterment is fine. Needless sacrifice is stupid and should be avoided.

Later I will attempt to delve more deeply in my ethical philosophies.

*I have no idea of “Barely Legal Teen Fuckfest” actually exists. It sounds plausible, and it doesn’t sound like a healthy expression of sexuality.

PBR Protest Continued

2006-07-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

My very helpful ex-roommate has been keeping me abreast of the Catholic pray-in at the Plain Brown Wrapper. He forwarded me this email:

Hello Gentlemen

I just wanted to let you guys know how things are going in regards
to the e-mail I sent three weeks ago about praying in front of the porn
shop down town Grand Forks:

The first week there were three of us praying. We got a lot of
rude comments, it was very busy at that time, I saw one guy walk away, and
at the end of the night a drunken guy came along and threatened to take
our life! (we're fine!)

The second week we had six guys attend. It was not as busy, we
got some more rude comments, and we got interviewed by the Grand Forks
Herald - they put an article in the Sunday paper.

As you know, we will be praying tomorrow from 9 to 10pm... and I
hope and pray, and I beg you to pray, that the eyes who read and the
ears that heard the article will be lead closer to Our Lord. We need to
pray that the faithful will join us in prayer for the poor souls who are
trapped to the addiction and sin of pornography, lust, etc... Also, we
need to pray for those who don't believe - that they may...

Yesterday we celebrated the feast day of St. Maria Goretti -
Virgin and Martyr - patron St. of Purity - Pray for us! She died at the age
of twelve.... she was stabbed to death, preferring to die rather than
be raped. The rapist - his urge and desire to do such an awful thing -
started with pornography.

Today - the first Friday of the month - we reflect on the Sacred
Heart of Jesus. Think of the deep sorrows of Christ’s most Sacred Heart
– His sorrow, that we would view His sons and daughters as OBJECTS and
even DESTROY them... You think He suffered on the Cross, well I know
He's suffering all the more for His children to come back to Him - how He
desires and thirsts for souls... how He loves us... Let us unite our
hearts to His!

I was also told that a local Bible study started praying a few
months ago for the porn shop to close, for some assistance from God... The
lady said, "and you guys came about!" Gentlemen, thank you for your
prayers! If you can't make it to pray on Saturdays - that's ok, but I beg
and urge you not to stop praying for the poor souls enslaved to this
horrific sin, the workers, those involved in the industry, for the shop
to close, for protection of our own souls... Even if it's one Hail Mary.

It simply all comes down to Heaven and Hell - we are going to one
of the two places FOR ETERNITY and your prayers are making a
difference! So, let us not waste any time, and fall to our knees and pray, pray,
pray. Thank you and continue the good fight!

I hope and pray all is well, God bless,

Since I missed the first one, and was unaware they were continuing the protest, I decided to saunter down to the PBR that night (since I needed massage oil anyway).

Well, the massage oil was a bust, as my favorite brand appears to be discontinued. However, I am glad that I talked to the nice protesters, and in fact rethink my earlier snark of their email.

Mind you, I still think that they are almost completely wrong, but they were polite and non-judgmental and were very willing to answer my questions, so I have to give them something.

Onwards to the interview:

What are your objections to pornography?
Pornography objectives people. It is degrading and harmful to the person in it, and it is harmful to the person consuming it. It harms the soul, it is an enslaving addiction. Jesus says "if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, I say that you have committed adultery", so all of these people are committing adultery. As a secular argument, I could see how pornography leads to rape. Ted Bundy even said that he went from pornography to violent pornography. The whole culture trains us to view women as objects, like Britney Spears. Pornography reduces sex to pleasure. Sex is supposed to be a self-gift, not just cheap pleasure. The stuff [in the store] cheapens sex...I have not seen in the store and I don't want to.

You've been doing this for 3 weeks, correct? 4 weeks.
How long do you plan to continue?
WE don't have a clear length. God willing, until the store closes.

So your ultimate goal is to close the store?
No, we want God to close the store. Prayer will work. WE may not be powerful, but god is, and we are the strongest when we are uniting ourselves with god through prayer.

What do you feel you are accomplishing?P
prayer is powerful, and especially witnessing like this. We are fighting against people who see women as objects, and showing men that they don't have to do this.

In your email, you talk about St. Maria Garatti. Could you explain to me why she is a saint?
The story of St. Maria is that she chooses to be stabbed instead of being raped. She represents the desire for purity, and not rejecting Jesus.

So are you saying that women who are raped are not pure?
No, we...no one would say that. It's more about loving God more than life: maturing...not rejecting Jesus. I'm not very good at this...try newadvents.org for more information.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
Just that pornography hurts so many people. It hurts family relationships. Would you want your husband coming into this store? It wrecks family, it's expensive, and people have become bankrupt. Sex is a self-gift: if you divorce love from sex, it's cheap. Pleasure is selfish... the removes and aspect of sex taking out the love. All humans need love.

In an effort to get both sides, I also went into the PBR. I was going to ask them some questions, but I only have to ask one before the manager swooped in and said that "No comment" was the word. The only question I got out was: "How has this affected the store" and the answer the clerk gave me was "more people have come in when they protest. They get curious what the store is about".

My response tomorrow.

Crazy Christians

2006-06-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I think that I should just make this a continuing series. My ex-roommate is a "recovering Catholic", but his freshman year of high school he was still going to the Bible studies, and so he's still on the mailing list.

He just recieved this letter today (printed in italics):

Hey guys,
It's been a long time... I hope ya all are having a great summer??? To get to the chase.... Prayer is needed!

YEAH! 'Cuz prayer does something!

Our fellow brothers and sisters have been and are falling into the grasp and lies of the evil one through pornography, pre-marital sex, rape, impurity, etc...

Did he just equate consensual sex with rape? I'm sorry, but I don't really see the two as equal. Not to mention, the fact that they keeping saying "the evil one" a) as if it was an actual person and b) not saying "Satan" "Lucifer" what-have-you. It honestly puts me in mind of saying "He-who-shall-not-be-Named" in Harry Potter books.

What makes matters worse is that the evil one is leading them straight to hell - ETERNAL PUNISHMENT and FOR EVER.

They are REALLY SERIOUS because they keep using ALL CAPS and seperate "forever" into two words.

Even at the loss of one soul to eternal damnation should bring us to tears - out of love of Christ and out of love of our fellow brother... A good place to start in this war against impurity and the culture of death is in our own town at the porn shop.

20 bucks says that some guy was caught by another member of his Bible study at the porn shop and needed to come up with an excuse fast as to why he was there, and came up with this.

A few guys and myself are going to start praying the whole Rosary - all 4 mysteries - in front of the porn shop on Saturdays from 9 - 11 pm (or when we end...)

We might be overtaken by the....holy spirt to stay longer.

We are praying for the poor souls who are trapped by the lies of the evil one, for the workers - all people involved in the industry, for the shop in Grand Forks and those around the world, the fathers who are enslaved, the sons, the family, all forms of pornography, sins of the flesh, etc...

Snark aside, I could get behind activism in the name of ending worker exploitation. But what this is going to be is shame someone for liking sex. The place is the only place I know of in town to get a vibrator, but I don't see sisters being mentioned as a consumer.

I am asking those of you who are in the area if you could join us? If you can't come or stay for the whole thing that's ok - even if you could come for one Hail Mary or one Our Father that would make all the difference in the world - especially eternally...

Correct my theology, but if you are in Hell, according to the Catholics, you're there forever? How is this making an eternal difference?

If you can't make it I beg you if you could pray with us - for our intentions - again even if it's just one Hail Mary... Also, if you could spread this message to any other brothers in Christ that would be most excellent! Let us run to our trapped brothers and sisters with the love of Christ!

Yeah, awesome dude! This is most excellent love! But not in the gay or sexual way. I love your cross, sister.

Some things to keep in mind... As we go about this we need to be careful - we are going to Hell itself... We are going there to pray and love and only to pray and give love - It must be understood that if we are yelled at, put down, spit upon, etc. we can't be yelling, arguing, or fighting back - that is exactly what the evil one would want... We are simply going to do the most powerful thing we can - pray and pray out of love. As I said earlier... this is exactly the place (as always) where we will need Mary as our shield and Christ as our sword!

Twenty dollars says that if they don't block anybody at the door, no one will say a word to them.

Through Mary our mother Christ our Saviour this will be huge! If you are thinking there are other things to worry about - well to prevent a man from viewing women as objects could be the difference of preventing him from raping someone in the future - the difference between an abortion.... - my brothers, this is HUGE!!!

What does rape and abortion have to do with a vibrator and massage oil?

Thank you guys so much for your love of Christ and the Gospel! God speed and I hope and pray all is well!

PAX,
Sean

P. S. Here's the address: *** *rd St. S. - If you are heading towards East Grand Forks on Demers down town, take a right on 3rd St. by the big water wheel thing, then go one block, and it will be on the corner to your right. Any Questions call me - 701-***-**** God bless!

The business in question is the Plain Brown Wrapper, known in most circles as the PBR (phonetic acronymn to confuse those not in the know). Now, I can understand pornography to be morally questionable, but that's not just what the PBR sells: it also sells candles, massage oil, and toys of varying types. I'm upset: I'd really like to counter-protest on Saturday, but I'll be out of town.

North Dakota

2006-06-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ah North Dakota: there's nothing like the "benign" wingnuts in full force. Any time I want to go to the cities, or visit my Grandma, these are the lovely little billboards assaulting my eyes.

I respect freedom of speech, and I am fully aware that the price of freedom of speech is I don't get freedom from speech. But it irritates me to know end: you cannot get a pro-choice billboard up in North Dakota. Even if there was enough of a presence to have a pro-choice organization up here (which we don't) we still could not put up billboards. The entire billboard industry here in ND refuses to put them up around here: some for moral reasons, some because it's bad for business. Now, you tell me: is that free speech? It sounds like propaganda to me.

If I every win the North Dakota state lottery, I am buying every single one of those billboard companies. I am buying them and put pro-choice slogans on instead.

Or, rather, I think I'll just build women's health clinics, and staff them with decent help. I'll pay the continuingly rising costs of insurance (one of the main reasons why we only have one women's health clinic in the state is because of "protestors" that make it too dangerous to go to work) and make sure women who need it can get abortions. I don't care about changing the minds of narrow-minded morons as much as I care about people getting their needs met.

Feminism

2006-06-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

Twisty Faster of "I blame the patriarchy" did a rather humorous (and scathing condemnation) of blow jobs. The resulting mess it interesting to watch, because it shows the dynamic of the progressive blogsphere. And it's times like this that I really, really wish that I was conservative.

But not for the reason one may assume. I like the fact that we're infighting because it shows discussion and growth. It shows that there are shades of grey, and that there are areas open to exploration and growth, and that the personal really is political.

I must say, though, black-and-white would be REALLY nice right now.

I've done activities growing up, and one of my favorite was Tae Kwon Do. In Tae Kwon Do, there's a lot of work and effort to put in: there's strength training, there's techniques to work on, there's forms, and finally sparring. Of all of them, sparring was my favorite, but it was also the most difficult. When we were learning, we would learn, say, a punch. We then did that punch about a billion times, and the instructor correcting that punch until it was just right. 25 left-hand, 25 right-hand. Then we would move on. It was very necessary, it was complicated, but it didn't require that much knowledge: it required obedience. You knew what you needed to do: you needed to do this punch, this way, and the instructor was the keeper of this knowledge, you followed him and you were rewarded or punished accordingly. You had a goal, and it was easy to work to it, and it was easy to see what was "right" and "wrong".

Free sparring was a little more complicated. Yes, you needed to know how to execute that punch, but there was a LOT more to think about. You had a hazy goal in mind- you wanted to win- but there was no clear path to navigate how to get there.

Afterwards, win or lose the class and the instructor sat down and talked about what you could do better, what you did well. There was no consensus: there are many ways to win, but there was a general feeling of how to get there.

Conservative politics are a lot like the former. There is a black and white: this is wrong, this is right. There is someone telling you what to do, and there's a clear answer to it.

Liberal politics are like the latter: we're going up against things that we have never seen before. We have a goal in mind, just not a clear idea of how to get there. We recognize diversity of opinion, and build on the work before us.

It's just, when you were frustrated; it was the punches that you feel back on. There's something very therapeutic about occasionally NOT thinking, just doing. And that's why sometimes I wish I was conservative: there is a clear goal, there's a clear way to get it, there's work and no thinking.

Decency

2006-06-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Over at Hugo's blog, there's a discussion going on about going shirtless in public. One of the comments is by a someone called Mermade:

Yes, we women are attracted to a man's nice chest, but I don't think that girls struggle nearly to the same extent as guys with staring at a man's chest, grabbing it and making crude jokes about it.

What bothers me the most about the statement, "Men can expose their chests in public, so women should be able to, too" is more or less about the undertones of it all. Basically, that would mean that a woman's breasts are no more special or valuable than a man's chest. It kind of means that they don't hold any uniqueness. (I know that's not what you mean, but that's how I feel). And I just don't buy into that. I think a woman's breasts are a part of the body that is very, very, very special. They already go under enough scrutiny when covered up.(emphasis mine) So I don't know... I just can't see eye-to-eye with you on this.

I disagree with this statement quite a bit, mainly because I know that women aren't any better at hiding our lust than men are, there are just stronger reprocusions when we do it. If I make a guy uncomfortable about looking at his chest, he might kick my ass, or at the very least, there are strong social reprocusions for it. I am already castigated as a slut for being "openly" sexual, it would be even worse if I did the creepy lust thing that guys feel okay doing. My breasts ARE NOT any more special than a man's, mine just happen to be a bit bigger and a little more useful when it comes to child-raising. As a sort of tom-boy, I'm telling you: you can be "groped" without it being anything sexual, as has happened when I played football or wrestling. The fact that my breasts are under scrutinity a lot means that many guys don't respect boundries, not that they are inherantly sexual. I mean, when ankles had to be covered up, they were considered sexual. I could be dressed as a nun, and I could still inspire lust. So, it's not my body, or any particular part of it that inspires lust or is inheirantly sexual: it's other's responses to it that does.

Perplex's quote was this:

I'm in agreement with Mermade here. Men's chests and women's breasts are obviously different, with a stronger sexualisation of women's breasts than men's chests - the reasons for which belong to another thread. Nevertheless, this is a fact. Correct me if I'm wrong, but are their any strip bars where you see SINGLE women (as in, walking in on their own) ogling men's chests? The only male strip bars I see are where you get "hen parties" (like a big group of women) who treat it all as a big laugh watching some guy strip. And I just see them laughing and enjoying themselves, not really ogling men's chests in silence. Also, what about porn for women? Again, can we really compare the amount of porn aimed at women's breasts (for men) with men's chests (for women)?

My point is that sexual parts of the body are covered for decency. That's why both men and women must cover their genitals. If it was a patriarchal conspiracy, men could walk around completely naked.

The fact that others sexualize me as a female is NOT my fault. I more than the sum of my body parts. And just because women express sexuality differently then men, and just because we have been socialized to not express that toward men, does not men that it doesn't exsist or that it isn't as strong. Consuming porn isn't really the must healthy way to express oneself as a sexual being, anyway, in my mind. My body is NOT indecent, and neither is a male's: it might be the nudist in me, but I don't think that there's anything wrong with it.

God/dess/less Part 3 (Hopefully a conclusion)

2006-06-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

This the third post in my deconversion series. Read part one and part two

It is odd to be an Agnostic in a family full of theists. My relatives still send me religious spam, even though I have politely and firmly asked them to stop doing it. I pretty much just delete anything that has "forward" in the title, so I hope I'm not missing anything important.

The reactions to my "coming out" have not been altogether pleasant, and after it was discovered that I was on birth control (and therefore assumed to be sleeping with guys, in this case, rightly) it was even worse.

My friend since Kindergarten accused me of being a filthy whore that he was done with. I didn't talk to him for three years.

My guardian from New Mexico called me a prostitute, and said that I must be having sex because my ex-boyfriend had.

I've been told I'm going to hell. I've been told that I need to read the Bible (which is funny, because I can quote the Bible better than most theists). I've been told that I'll "Grow out of it" much like I'll grow out of my feminism. I've been asked how many babies I've aborted (I wasn't even aware I could abort a baby). I've been told that people will "pray for me".

Some of the reactions I received were surprising. My father, who is now trying to reconnect with me, told me that "Yeah, some of the stuff is silly, but you should do it for your mother". To some of my other friends, mainly the non-Christian theist, the reaction was "So?" said much like "You were wrong before, and now you're a different kind of wrong". To some other friends, it was totally non-climatic: they rolled their eyes and went "duh".

Whenever I think about this, I can't help but think that this is like my friend "coming out" as gay. Some people were harsh, some people were lukewarm, and some people were like "You wear Birkenstocks".

And, running with this analogy, I don't know too many gays who hate straights. I may get called a "Breeder" every once in awhile, normally jokingly, but never any hostility towards them.

I do not hate Christians. I don't even dislike Christians. I'm not mad at "God" (how could I be mad at a being I don't think exists?) nor am I mad at Jesus. In fact, I think of Jesus of Nazareth much the same why I think of Buddha or Socrates: he had some good ideas, he had some bad ideas.

What I do dislike is having to live UNDER Christianity, and I do mean under. I already posted about Christian Laws but there's more than that: there's the arrogance that so many people possess that I'm less-than they are: less spiritual, less moral, less than they are. That they put up with me because they are so magnanimous.

And I am not without faith. I have faith in something that has less evidence for it then the Christian God: I have faith that humans can learn will learn, and as a society we will actively evolve into a better society (although, not a perfect one). We have the capacity to be good, and people will chose to be good if the opportunity is there. When people feel secure, people will be compassionate. This is where I draw the desire to get up every morning and go out into the world, the thought that keeps me together: we can be better.

Sometimes, however, I think this is just as much a fairy tail as Star Trek and God.

God/dess/less Part Two

2006-06-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

This is Part Two of my religion posts. For part one please go here.

In the summer of 1999, I moved to Alamogordo, NM. There, my mom became a born-again, full of zeal for Christ. I joined up with the AP crowd, and, like a good scientist, decided to explore my faith, and the faiths of others.

I didn't like the churches we went to. First there was the one that asked me not to come back because I was a bad influence on other members of the youth group. Then there was the one where the pastor preached about women keeping their figures for their husbands or else they were not following their Biblical mandate. Then there was the pastor that told my mom she should stay with her abusive husband (my father) for "the kids". (Oh wow, is that a rant for another day).

I finally told my mother that I didn't believe in god. She broke down in front of me crying, saying that I she had failed me.

I couldn't stand to see her crying, so I went to church again.

Besides, there were real benefits for me to be a member of the church. I always had a group of "friends" to back me up, which was pleasant for someone with limited social graces. I had a place that I could go and sing, since my schedule didn't allow for me to take enough electives, and sing songs that I loved (and still love to this day). I was considered "moral" because I was a good Christian girl.

And, to my eternal shame, there was a boy.

He came in, with his three younger brothers, his weird mom and his stoic dad. He had a wry smile, tousled blonde hair, and a cross around his neck.

I pretended for him, and for my mom, and for the acceptance. I pretended to be a Christian. I went to church every Sunday, went Youth Group every Wednesday, and participated in all of the community service activities. I went to the youth group, swallowed most of my opinions. I stayed nice and chaste, even though it made me miserable, and even though I was horny as all hell. I didn't even masturbate.

Then we moved to Washington for my senior year of high school, and he went to college. We broke up, and later I found out that he was cheating on me (as if I didn't already know). I didn't really care about impressing anyone in Ferndale, and honestly, the push to be Christian wasn't as strong here. I feel into a group that one of my friends referred to as "the least, the lost, and the leftovers". We were the group that didn't fit very well into the other cliques. This group was religiously indifferent: we had a PK, a Muslim, and Wicca, and a bunch of atheists.

New city meant new church. Now, most everyone thinks that Washington is liberal central. This isn't true: Seattle and surrounding areas is liberal central, the rest of the state is Montana conservative. And the church that my mom picked out was the absolute WORST one I have ever been to in my life. The very first day I'm there, they are on me for wearing a halter top, because I'm wasn't "being very considerate of my Christian brothers".

Then there was the misrepresentation of evolution, which irritated me to no end. The focusing on the gospel of Paul, and how gays shouldn't marry and women should be subservient. So many times did I try to walk out of that church, with mom grabbing me and keeping me sitting down.

I tried to ignore him. I would bring a book to read, but that ended when my mother realized it wasn't the Bible. Then I would read the bible, highlighting quotes, but that ended when my mom realized I wasn't paying attention to the sermon, I was just finding contradictory and immoral quotes in the book.

Then came November, and the pastor telling us we had to vote Republican if we wanted someone Christian in office.

I told my mom that I wasn't Christian, and more to the point, I wasn't going to church anymore. She cried, and was frustrated, and told me that as long as I lived under HER roof, I would do as she said. Dad backed her up, even though he never went to church either.

One day, I was in my pajamas, and refused to get ready and go to church. Dad picked me up, uncombed hair and all, and threw me in the car. (I was 17 at the time). I spent the entire time glaring, daring anyone to ask me why I was in my spaghetti-strapped PJS.

That was the only time that I attempted to not go to church anymore, although I didn't keep my opinions to myself after that. I quit doing any of the extra things, and my mother (perhaps out of embarrassment) quit asking me to come.

I left WA for North Dakota as soon as I graduated. I went to college and have not stepped a foot back into a church. My parents, to this day, are confused as to why I have abandoned almost all of their values and beliefs. I'm just glad to be free of them.

God/dess/less Part One

2006-05-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am an agnostic. For those unfamiliar with that term, it means that I think "god" is unknowable, and therefore, not important. I'm not saying that a supreme being CANNOT exist, just that I feel it unlikely. I'm also unwilling to say that the scientific method will tell us everything (even though it does tell us a lot). I believe in the general goodness of mankind: we have evolved over time, and we will continue to evolve if we stay vigilant. People will do the right thing if given a real opportunity to do so. There's more to it, but that's the nitty-gritty of it.

Along the same vein, I do not believe in the Christian god: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. It is logically impossible to be all three in this world.

If you had known me when I was a child, you would be shocked that I am not a Christian. I was raised the first child of a middle-class, Christian Conservative family in the heart of North Dakota. I used to be a whole-hearted Christian: my allowance went to Africa every week; I would walk to church the days my mom couldn't drive me, in my white tights and pretty shoes, crunching over the white snow because I wanted to feel loved. The music would fill me; I sang my little heart out.

I knew I didn't have much to offer the church; I was small and didn't have a lot of money. But I tried my best: I made sure to learn my Sunday school lessons perfectly (to my Sunday school teacher's consternation: I asked too many questions and talked too much). I handed out drinks and cookies, serving myself last because that's what god wanted me to do, right? Every week, I would draw a picture for Jesus, which I put into the offering plate, until one of the adults in church (cruelly and publicly) informed me that the plate didn't go to god, it went to the church. And the church didn't need bad drawings.

There were a lot of things that gradually lead me away from the faith. First, there was how horrible people at church treated each other. My mom would come away from church snappish and unhappy. People told me things at church, like "Balloons don't belong at church" and "girls MUST wear skirts" and "Eve is responsible for original sin, so all little girls must be extra good to make up for it". These people were not anything like my friend Jesus.

The next few things were a result of that evil public education. Even though all of my teachers were Christian, and most actually went to my church, they still were teaching us critical thinking. I remember quite vividly my first grade teacher, Mrs. Gilge going "You should not just blindly follow the crowd. Think for yourself, don't be a mindless sheep." Then, that very Sunday, the pastor was telling us how Jesus was our Sheppard, and we should be willing sheep.

Then, we learned about our namesakes. This was partly my parents fault, and partly my school's fault, but mostly my "fault". My sisters, and most of my classmates, got good Christian names. I got "Cassandra": a Trojan princess who was also a priestess of Athena. When we learned about our names in school, I started to be fascinated with Greek mythology. I learned how different myths were translated differently. I learned about mythical evolution and how it corresponded to which tribes won which battles.

One day, I was reading about Perseus. Mainly, how he was the result of a god impregnating the virgin mother, Danae. "Hehe" thought I, in my 10 year-old self- righteousness. "Who would believe such silly stuff? A child being born of a virgin because "god" did it....wait..." I experienced a heavy moment of cognitive dissonance.

By the time I was hitting my teen years, I was having a full-blown crisis of faith. I couldn't talk to this to my parents: my mom by this time was a full-of-zeal born-again, and my dad was a don't-question Easter/Christmas Christian. I went to the pastor.

The pastor, Pastor Arlen, will forever have my respect. I was a confused, smart-aleck teen looking to someone to justify the universe. The pastor did this in the weirdest way possible: every two weeks, we would play chess. The loser had to pay the winner a dozen cookies. During these matches, he tried to explain his wisdom to me.

He tried his best with me, and I think he's one of two pastors I've ever had, (and I've had a lot) that ever gave a damn. And what ended up happening? He got fired from the church.

Immigration reform

2006-05-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

President Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard Troops to the Mexican border to help combat what he called a "matter of national importance". Thinking that this may cause unintended consequences, but not being involved directly in immigration issues, I decided to interview a border patrol agent and get his view on the issue. Since this is a semi-public blog, this agent will remain anonymous.

How long have you been with the Border Patrol?
21 years four months and six days

During this time, where have you worked at?
Southern stations, 3 northern stations and details to San Diego and Fort Isabel

What are some changes you have observed after the Border Patrol was realigned under Homeland Security in 2001?
Priority is now terrorists and terrorists’ weapons. They have shifted away from immigrants

In the President's speech, he said that he increased funding for the Border Patrol by 66%. Has this been enough money to be effective, and what do you see most of the funds going to?
It’s not that effective. You have to be able to utilize the authority you've got; spending money looks good but it we were more effective 20 years ago with nothing than today with all our money and our hands tied.

President Bush also said that he was raising the number of agents from 9,000 to 18,000 by 2008. What are you feelings on this?
It's a lark, they are not training agents, it's just bulk and it doesn't work. You have to be able to enforce the laws. Without enforcement, it's just holding hands down the border

Do you think fences at the border in Urban Centers will significantly combat the stem of immigration?
No, they [this administration] don’t want to stop it. He's making it sound good, but he has no intention of stopping it. This is cheap labor for his campaign contributors

Do you foresee any trouble with the 6000 National Guardsmen that will help patrol the border for the next 2 years?
They have no power to arrest, and they were designed for national emergency. The immigration increase has been going on for the last 10 years. This is not a military problem, nor a national emergency: it's a growing crisis.

What ramifications do you see of the abolishment of the "catch and release" system?
It's all about money, they've turned over a country: there are too many illegals here. They may say that they're getting rid of it, but that's not going to happen. The other thing is it's difficult to tell where illegals are coming from. "Catch and release" came up because it's more expensive to ship illegals back to their home country than just to Mexico: you're going to find more agents just sending people we have suspicions coming from some South American country to Mexico because it's cheaper. This works well for the illegal, because Mexico is much closer to coming back in [to the US].

Shifting gears for a bit, what do you think of the recent bill to make English the US's official language that has recently passed in the Senate?
Look through your history books, see how any group that has had multiple languages has failed.

So you support the change?
Absolutely.

Any thing else you would like to add?
No, I think that's okay

Interesting, is it not, that this is the feelings of a Border Patrol agent. By no means is this the only person in the Border Patrol who holds these beliefs, (although there are less conservative agents).

I disagree with most of the post. I think people who are so afraid of Mexican immigrants have a strong level of racism and fear of change. But, instead of going off on it, I'd just like to direct you to a few country, more specifically their languages and GDP.

Sweden
Canada
Finland
Israel
United Kingdom
New Zealand

Now let's look at some countries that only have one official language.
Saudi Arabia
France
China
North Korea

I'm beginning to think that a country can thrive with more than one language, and having only one official language doesn't mean that it's going to benefit anyone.

Consent

2006-05-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, I said on this comment thread that I would post an explination about "consent". But, seeing as it's now 10:30, and I'm just off-work and tired, I'm not going to tonight. Sorry anyone who wandered over and wished to rip through my argument. For the time being, here's an open thread for discussion. I will update when I have more time, as this is going to be a LONG post.

Slut

2006-05-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Jill at Feministe has a great post up about being a slut. I figure now is a good a time as any to talk about my own experiences with being a slut (reposted from my personal blog.)

When I was a child, I used to get teased a lot. I'd say I didn't develop my (limited) social skills until about my freshman year of high school. There were a lot of insults thrown my way, but the one that puzzled me the most was "girl".

"You're such a girl" he would taunt. "No I'm not!" I'd rebutt indignantly. But, I'd know that, yes, I was a girl. I had girl-parts, long hair, seemingly posessed XX chromosonal arrangements...I was a girl. But being called "girl" WAS an insult, it wasn't a compliment. I knew that as a child, even if I couldn't explain to you why it was an insult.

Later, the insult de jour would be "nerd". Eventually, I went "fuck it, hell yes I'm a nerd". I like literature (especially sci fi and fantasy), video games, role-playing games, philosophical discussions and pop culture aspects. I am a nerd. That term I was able to co-opt for myself and my friends: occasionally we joke that somewhat just earned "prestige levels in nerd", a phrase in and of itself reveling the speaker to be of the less mainstream persuasion.

Now, the insult that gets lobbed at me the most frequently (although, less in the school-yard taunting setting and in the more subtle version) would be "slut". (Although "bitch" would probably be a close second).

Slut. It's really a good insult word, from an aethetic sense. The sl makes a nice hissing noise, and the t and the end really closes it. "You're a ssssslllluT". A word that's spoken much like someone would refer to something disgusting.

It's interesting to note that I feel unable to co-opt word like I did with "nerd", and it's not something I can really argue with on a semantic level, much like "girl". A quick jaunt over to dictionary.com says that slut is defined as:

A woman considered sexually promiscuous.
A woman prostitute.
A slovenly woman; a slattern.

Okay, then. The second definition is wrong, seeing as I don't get paid in momentary means when I have sex. A slovenly women...well, I'm pretty untidy, but seeing as I don't smell, and am not dirty, I don't think that one counts either. So, the first one is the only one which could apply to me.

"A woman considered sexually promiscuous". The fact that the word "considered" is in there at all, means that it's a matter of subjectivity right from the get-go, but what the fuck is considered "promiscuous" anyway? Back to dictionary.com

pro·mis·cu·ous adj.
Having casual sexual relations frequently with different partners; indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners.
Lacking standards of selection; indiscriminate.

Kay, the first one doesn't apply to me: I'm so not indiscriminate in my choice of sexual partners. They have to meet my standards, and I'm unwilling to compromise on those standards. Most of them have met standards ABOVE my base standard, so I'm not indiscriminate. So, ergo, I'm not promiscuous.

If I'm not promiscuous, then I'm not a slut. QED.

But, seeing as slut is defined as "considered promiscuous" then I can't use MY definition of indiscriminate, whoever is judging me gets to consider that. And, since I'm female, the people who feel they have the right to judge me is, hmmm, everybody. Damn, back to being a dirty slut again. Just like being a "girl" I can't logically throw back "no, I'm not".

So, what's a girl to do? In the nice, denotative sense, slut's not really that bad. So I've slept with "a lot" of guys, bfd? Just like girl, why is that an insult, and not merely a statement of fact?

Because no one says slut as a positive thing. Ever. Wheras pimp is frequently considered a compliment, a women is to have no sex drive at all. Slut is on the "whore" side of the virgin/whore dicotomy: virgin is pure, unsullied, untouched, restrained virtuous. "Virgin" deserves protections, respect and care. Whore, therefore, is bad. "Whore" means dirty, used, sinful. "Whores" do not deserve protection, respect and care: whores are just public property to be used and dismissed. Like the village bicycle, everyone's had a turn. And what's worse, if the village bicycle suddenly gets a flat tire, fuck it: just throw it out and get a new one, it's not that big of a deal. (and I'm going to stop now, this analogy is getting really strained).

And if the slut denies someone the "right" to use it, watch out. Now she's an "uppity slut". She is someone who needs to be shoved back into her rightful place, a lesser on the hierchy.

If someone says "slut" you can be damned sure that this person has, to some degree, internalized sexism. The thing with the virgin/whore dicotomy is neither have status as a human: one is a pedestal ideal, the other is something that is okay to be drug through the mud. Neither one reflects the whole spectrum of human experience: neither being perfect nor being a demon. This false dicotomy is destructive to any women who falls on either end of it, because both are a denial of humanity.

My sexuality is not lessened by having sex with one guy, or a million (maybe a million, that'd hurt, but you get the hyperbole), or by masturbating, or by having lots of sex with one guy. I'm not a pie, there isn't a limit to my sexuality. I'm not "used" after sex, I'm not selfish to enjoy an experience with someone else, and it's no less "significant" when I have sex because I've had it before. But mostly, my sexuality is my own. It's not for someone else to decide, to insult, to tisk away because of some belief on how I should act.

So, while the insult is a total non sequitar, it's still very much supposed to be an insult. It is supposed to be warning me away from my sexuality, because then I don't "deserve" the protections befitting a good woman. It is a way to force me into a mold that I don't fit, and is contridictory to my nature, for the simple reasons of asserting power.

UND Hockey Nickname

2006-05-01T09:51:00.001-07:00

The University of North Dakota, like most universities, has a mascot; ours just happens to be contriversal.

UND is the Fighting Sioux. This has come under fire in recent years, with some people wanting to change it (with charges that it's racist), and others wanting to keep it (because it's part of the UND tradition).

For those of you unfamiliar, here's a quick timeline (for a longer timeline, here's a biased one in favor of removing the name:

In 1930, UND became the "Fighting Sioux". For the next 70 years, there is contention over this nickname. In 1990, more and more groups formed to get rid of the Sioux nickname. In 2000, it looked like we were going to change the name.

Then in 2001, Ralph Englestad gave 100 million dollars for a new hockey rink, with the condition that we had to keep the nickname. To make sure that the nickname "sticks", many logos were put into the arena, including being stamped right into the bricks of the building.

Now, the NCAA has issued that they will not allowUND (and three other institutions with Native nicknames) to host play-off games or use uniforms with the names or logo until the name is changed, citing the nickname as "hostile and abusive". UND has lost its final appeal with the NCAA, and now it has to go to the federal courts (right now, Sioux diehards are pleading either antitrust (since NCAA is a virtual monopoly), or discrimination, since other nicknames are allowed like the Fighting Irish). For UND alumns and students, there is a forumfor talking about it.

I've got to say, I didn't really have an opinnion about this. As far as I was concerned, arguing about this was missing the larger issue: namely, the fact that sports take up HUGE portions of my tuition unnecessarily. The fact that the state and community was racist, and specifically racist towards Natives, was a such a "duh" thing that I didn't think anybody disputed it. I figured they were going to spend more time and effort over the problems on the reservation with poverty and low health, the names of the cities (Devil's Lake, anyone?) and the budget cuts to the Indian Studies department.

Now that I've researched it, however, I think the logo has to change. I'm not thrilled with it: I dislike that I'm going to have a SERIOUS increase in my tuition. I dislike that the ONLY reason UND became open to having Native students and an Indian Studies program was because they entered into a thieve's bargin: UND uses the name, they get their department.

Some claim that the name isn't racist, that it's an "honor". Well, I'm not sure about that, I'm not Native, I can't know for sure. My first inclination is "I don't care about the Viking's logo, and that's my ancestors", but that's not the same.

A) As a white person, I'm priveleged in that I get to be the norm. People don't look at me and assume I'm a Viking. I don't have a "Viking culture" that I have any need or want to defend.

B) I believe that people should respect other people's wishes. The only thing that analogous is being a women: I don't like being called "baby" or "Miss". I don't like being wolf-whistled at. I've heard people say that I shouldn't be offended, because it's a "compliment", and look at all the women who are complimented by it. But if I'm not complimented, it's NOT a compliment, it's an insult. If the Natives are saying that it is offensive, I'm going to believe them; even if it's only some of the Natives.

This is not morally defensible. "Tradition" isn't enough to justify continued racism. We need to change the nickname, even though it is expensive.

Disney and Labor Unions

2006-04-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

In my Communications 300 class, my professor lent me a copy of "How to Read Donald Duck". It's a translation of a Brazilian book, and it talks about how consumerist and imperialist values are being transferred through Disney books.

It got me thinking: I watch Disney channel pretty religiously; a) because it's one of the 6 channels I get and b) I love cartoons. But it's getting harder to enjoy them, namely because of Disney's anti-union sentiments.

There are two episodes in particular I'm thinking about: one from "The Proud Family" (PF) and one from "The Buzz on Maggie" (BoM). "PF" is about Penny Proud and her family, which includes her father, mother, twin siblings, and grandmother (in order: Oscar, Trudy, Beebe and Ceece, and Sugah Mama) and her friends: Sticky, Dijonay, Zoey, and LaCienega. "BoM" is about a fly named Maggie Pestki, and her family of flies and her friends, who are varying types of bugs (can you tell that I don't watch that one as much?).

Season One, Episode two [Strike] Penny Proud and her friends can't do anything: none of them make enough money to play mini-golf, bowl, or see a movie, anything at all (even lie in the grass: the Gross Sisters charge them a sitting fee). So, they decide to strike until their parents give them more money. The episode ends with everyone deciding that they can't hold out, and they all lose their allowances for a time.

In "Those Pesky Roaches" Maggie realizes that she is getting paid much less than her classmates, so she convinces her brothers to go on strike with her. Her parents hire roaches instead and the strike fails, with Maggie and her brothers having to take no allowance for a year to pay for the roaches.

The anti-union, anti-strike sentiment is there. You don't deserve enough to spend, you better not press the authority, or you're going to come out worse. Little kids see this, and are going to be afraid of striking, and internalize that they don't deserve a living wage, or a fair wage.

In PF, no one could keep up with inflation: they were working and STILL couldn't have anything. In BoM, Maggie didn't get what her friends got, because of the "benefits" of her family (job): presents on Christmas, and home-cooking (which, Maggie's friends should have been getting as well, so it is really a stupid argument).

I doubt that this wasn't intentional, or at the very least, that they are unaware of the sentiment. Disney has had some difficulties with unions in the past, and in fact when these episodes first aired, there were accusations of union busting.

This is scary, for an organization that is the second most powerful media organization in the world.