in a couple weeks, little bear will be receiving his mmr vaccine. while the amount of vaccines he receives makes me nervous, i read a lot about it, which made me feel a bit better. and so i have dutifully taken him in to receive his shots on schedule. but the mmr gives me pause.

i received the mmr as an adult because it was a university requirement. as far as i know, i’ve never had a reaction to a vaccine aside from a sore arm. not so for the mmr. in addition to some of the side effects i was aware of – such as feeling like crap – i had a horrific headache for almost a week. and i was in my 20s. i hate to think what it’s going to make my baby feel like.

so i went in search of some specific information about this vaccine. my first stop was pharyngula, as he usually offers up some pretty reassuring science. instead, the first post i found was about sending readers off to vote in a poll about vaccines and austism. many of the commenters were being complete assholes, and, honestly, i value the opinions of the parents voting in the poll more than a bunch of angry nerds. the parents are people who witnessed first-hand what vaccines seemed to do to their kids. are these parents wrong? i guess probably, but when your child gets a shot then deteriorates within a couple weeks of said shot… well, i’m not an idiot, but i’d probably blame the shot, too. that’s one of the things that bugs me about the science side: they make fun of these people and say things like, “most people get vaccinated and most people like ice cream, so vaccines make you like ice cream.” that’s not really comparable. for one thing, it seems like most autism parents claim that their child got a shot, then changed fairly soon afterward. for another, the autism rate did seem to go way up after the new vaccine schedule (5 shots at a time every three months) was introduced. to make stupid generalizations is just snotty and counterproductive. could the rate have gone up because the screening process is better? sure, i’m completely willing to believe that. that’s probably the case. however, i do find it a bit worrying that it’s possible that giving babies so many vaccines could be harming them.

so, after my initial experience with that topic on that site – messing with poll results is way scientific, right? – i decided to skip blogs and laypeople and try to find studies specific to the mmr. i’m not having a lot of luck. many of the studies i see are like this one, which is about vaccines in the first year. the mmr isn’t given in the first year, so that doesn’t really help. and when people want to see a study that includes children who were never vaccinated, this quote from a 1999 study gets thrown around a lot: “There was no difference in age at diagnosis [of autism] between the cases vaccinated before or after 18 months of age and those never vaccinated.” well, there wouldn’t be. children are usually diagnosed between the ages of 2 and 4, and there’s a reason there’s such a wide range. autism is a spectrum disorder that presents differently depending on severity. and you have people who were born with it and people who regress. i think this is because autism isn’t just one disease/syndrome, and therefore doesn’t have just one cause. there is almost certainly a genetic component, and this is especially obvious in children who have the symptoms from birth. but the children who lose language skills between the ages of 1-3? couldn’t the cause in their cases be environmental? or maybe something genetic touched off by environmental factors? going back to that quote, if autism is genetic – or certain types are genetic – then you’ll have unvaccinated kids on the autism spectrum as well. but the timing of their diagnosis has more to do with doctor cooperation and parental awareness than when their symptoms presented. and if a parent notices her child regressing after a vaccine, and the doctor doesn’t agree with her, chances are very good that her child will not receive an official diagnosis until much later. like maybe when that child enters preschool with the autistic unvaccinated kid who also gets diagnosed at that time.

anyway, i’m going to keep trying to find information on the mmr, because i really do want him to stay safe from these diseases. but in closing, i’d like to tell some of these people to get the sticks out of their asses and have some fucking compassion. you’re more annoying than the conspiracy theorists. it’s not like i’m saying dinosaurs didn’t exist or there’s a sky wizard or anything. i just want to be sure that my first and only baby doesn’t develop a mysterious and debilitating illness that could ruin his life. (and, let’s face it, our lives, too.) especially when it’s as easy as not giving him a shot.

yes, this.

i didn’t write about the murder of dr. tiller, but sohei and i discussed it at length the other day, and i kind of feel the need to post about it.

you would think that being pregnant would make me more anti-choice, but it’s actually made me more pro-choice. for me, it used to be about women’s rights and anger at the fact that there are people out there who ultimately need to have control over all women, everywhere. (if they were really that concerned about “life” they wouldn’t be in favor of the death penalty, would support programs that help pay for services these fetuses need once they’re actually out of the womb, and, oh yeah, not murder people they don’t agree with. so yeah, it’s about control.) but by carrying a fetus around inside me, i’ve come to realize how that choice goes beyond not letting some asshole i don’t know have control over my body, and how it goes beyond women having the option to end a pregnancy that they know from the get-go that they can’t handle. i was relieved to know that if i found out that there was a problem that would harm his (or my) quality of life, i had the option to terminate the pregnancy. knowing i had that choice made things a lot less stressful. and now that i have seen my little bear via ultrasound, and feel him moving around, i have grown to love him. and because i love him, i would rather he never have to experience a life of pain and surgeries and whatever other awful things could happen to him. i’m lucky that he seems okay right now, and will probably be fine (if huge) when he’s born. but i also appreciate that i had the choice to end things if i knew he was going to suffer.

if you think that women who choose to abort in the second or third trimesters are lazy or stupid, you need to read this and understand the decision that these women face. i would be devastated if i lost my little bear at this point. but if i knew that i had to choose between losing him now or a year or so down the road after a lot of pain for everyone, i know what my decision would be. i’m just glad i don’t have to make that choice. unfortunately for the 300 or so women per year who do, their choice just got a lot more limited.

r.i.p. dr. tiller…

wow, i can’t believe shit like this is allowed to happen.

i feel kind of stupid saying this, but i’m sad that chrysler is declaring bankruptcy. hopefully, this doesn’t mean the death of the company, though who knows. i have an unreasonable loyalty to chrysler, because i generally really like their cars. when sohei and i started dating, he had an ‘88 lebaron, and it was pretty sweet. it was black and had a spoiler and sunroof and everything. we had that car for a few years, and it made it on all the trips back and forth from gainesville to land o’ lakes, etc. i cried my eyes out when the fuckers at the condo association had it towed, because it’s tags weren’t current. when we went car shopping a year or so later, i had my heart set on a pt cruiser. it’s been a pretty good car, too, though i don’t think it’s quite as hardy as the lebaron was. (it only really started acting up after sohei left it running with the keys locked inside.) i really need a new car, and if i were actually allowed to buy one, i probably wouldn’t buy a chrysler this time around, but only because they don’t seem to make hybrids. if they made a hybrid pt cruiser, though, i’d totally buy it. (which is moot, because gish can’t have a new car, for some reason.) i guess maybe if chrysler caught up with the foreign companies who are smart enough to build hybrids, maybe they wouldn’t be going into bankruptcy…

So once again we see what happens when one tries to use Rush, the band, as a guide for wise living.

You can listen to the freaking oak trees if you want, and let them shade out your entire vegetable garden, but I finally got fed up today and went out to the scraggly weed patch where the garden used to be, and I was like, “Hey, remind me. I shouldn’t trim the crap out you because…? And they were all like, “This is a violation of our rights,” and “You’re punishing success,” and “The taller shall not be ruled by the shorter.” So I pull-started the chainsaw and started trimming, and they yelled and sent all their squirrels snarling down, and long story short, the tip for wise living this time was that if someone comes over and finds you out back chainsawing squirrels in a rain of green acorns, don’t be naïve and think the oaks won’t be all, “Uh, we just got here.” “Take more acorns, sir, but spare these hamsters.” “Hi, what are you guys looking oh my God…”

-via sadly, no

i hate that song.

god, i fucking hate cops. of course, this kind of shit happens all the time. i wonder whether anyone would have even heard about this is it hadn’t been a football player.

mmm-hmm. thank you.

there’s so much wrong with this story, i don’t even know where to begin. i’ll just focus on this:

By limiting annual pay to $500,000 and dishing out additional pay in restricted stock that can’t be cashed in until the government bailout money is paid back, a host of unintended consequences may result, ranging from a brain drain of top talent to a potentially less-generous approach to paying employees at other financial firms.

okay, you know what? the pay cap only applies to those institutions who received bailout funds. so “brain drain” isn’t exactly a new problem to these fucktards. if they had any talent or intelligence to begin with, they wouldn’t need the damn bailout. as a taxpayer who is watching my money get pissed away on corporate welfare, i’m completely okay with the pay cap. in fact, i’d be far more okay with a limit of around $100,000 but then apparently the economy would go into a tailspin as these greedy assholes would all flock to some other banking mecca. oh wait, there isn’t one. and even if there were, who in their right mind would hire these people? and as far as less generous pay at other firms, cry me a fucking river.

“One risk of the plan is putting the survival of firms at risk by handcuffing their ability to pay top performers,” says compensation consultant Alan Johnson. Some fear executives at banks who take TARP money will go to banks with no pay restrictions.

“The unintended consequence is you end up killing the institution you tried to save,” says Johnson. “You drive away the good people.”

top performers? i guess it’s a matter of perspective. they just don’t suck quite as much as everyone else in that office. still, i don’t think people at these institutions are paid according to how well they do their jobs. the guys at the top of the ladder – you know, the ones who fucked everything up in the first place – are the ones who get paid insane amounts, and are the ones who will probably be hit hardest by the pay cap. these places are fucked anyway, and would already be dead if it weren’t for the bailout. they killed themselves.

thank. you.

i feel like i should have more to say about the fact that we have a new president and i finally feel like maybe this country’s got a shot. but i can’t think of anything that hasn’t already been said a thousand times, and far better, so i’ll just direct you back to this post i wrote upon his victory.

i will say that, if this whole baby thing works out, i’m really glad my kid will be born during the obama administration, having narrowly avoided the bush debacle.

i posted a link to this the first time the diarist presented it, but it still strikes a chord with me.

yes. we. did.

my president

[more pictures]
[international headlines]
[the world reacts]

it’s definitely go time.

last night, i went to the dem poll worker training. i’m ready to do the voters’ rights protection thang on election day.

today, i voted. it took two hours, but i did it, and i’m glad.

tomorrow, i go canvassing.

on tuesday, i’m taking the day off work to hang around a polling place from around 7 am to 7 pm at least, rain or shine. no voter shall go disenfranchised on my watch!

and i already bought all the swag and made all the donations i can afford.

i had the foresight to ask for wednesday off, too, in case i end up at the polling place late or stay up all night waiting for the results. i’m hoping the election will be called for obama by midnight, but you never know.

it has to happen this time. this isn’t just about keeping rethugs out of office. it’s about getting obama in. it’s not about the lesser of two evils this year. he’s going to be a great president, and i just wish i could do more to help.

sorry, i’m calling bullshit on this. basically, grasping at straws, doctors are claiming that the recent increase in kidney stones in young children are a result of salt-heavy diet and obesity. you’re trying to tell me that kids didn’t eat lunch meat and soup and also drank way more water in the 80’s? i don’t think so. they pretty much glossed over the melamine thing in the article, but i think it’s pretty important here. “oh, melamine-induced kidney stones only happen to chinese people.” again, i don’t think so. our government allows a small amount of melamine to be present in our food. that builds up over time.

so if you asked me what the difference is in diet between the 80s and today, i’d have to say additives. shit, when i was a kid, everyone ate baloney sandwiches at lunch every day. and with the advent of bottled water, i’m betting kids today probably drink more water than we did when we were kids. melamine aside, there’s a lot of scary stuff in our food and even in the bottles people are drinking their water out of. anyway, this fat kid never had any trouble with kidney stones. nor any of the other fat kids in my class. i’m getting tired of people ignoring why we’re looking at more sick children than ever before. maybe it’s because it’s a problem that would be too hard to fix. maybe it’s too scary to think that we’re consuming poison every day. but blaming it on the wrong things isn’t helping anyone, and blaming everything on teh fat is just further stigmatizing people who don’t deserve it.

holy shit, i love barack obama. he just made a nerdy superman joke and he’s so fucking funny. i’ll put a youtube clip of it later if one comes out.

update: here’s the video.

“i’m an old, rich, white guy. my opponent is a black dude with a scary-sounding name. i’m clearly the underdog here!”

it’s been a so-so week. i’ve had some nasty abdominal pain the past couple of days. it kept me up last night. i’m pretty sure it was my gall bladder again. or i have an ulcer. sohei made me feel better by telling me that he’d be willing to get up at any time to take me to the hospital, and i was finally able to fall asleep.

in other news, i was walking from my car to the library when a couple of strange guys asked about my lip ring. and then one said to the other, “dude, she’s so pale. she looks like scully.” and the other said, “dude, i know! she’s hot.” which i thought was pretty funny. it was pretty early in the morning to be that stoned.

ki-san has started to show an undue amount of concern about me and asked that i fill out a questionnaire about how i feel about my job.

and, finally, i spent the evening watching the vp debate. since the only thing palin could have done to appear worse would have been to pee herself or knock the podium over, i assumed it would be considered a win for her, but biden (according to the polls at least) was the clear winner. and obama continues to climb in the polls, particularly in this insane state where i live.

okay, so is obama an elitist or is he ghetto? make up your minds, people!

[i started writing this a couple weeks ago, and then something came up and i figured i'd get back to it later. then i decided to just leave it. until today, where the first thing i saw in the news (aside from ted kennedy's brain tumor ) was hillary clinton complaining about sexism. so here's the original post and then some.]

i’ve been reading about this here and there, and then the daily show did a piece on it the other night. because i’m a woman (and white, at that) i’m supposed to be in the hillary camp, and i’m not a good feminist if i’m not. to me, this issue goes beyond gender. to make it about that trivializes the larger matter at hand, and that is, who will be better for this country, and possibly the world? (though our empire is starting to crumble, our actions are still pretty far-reaching.)

i’ll just say it plainly: i don’t think clinton would make a better president than obama. it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman. it has more to do with the fact that i see her as rather hawkish, and this is a time when we need to disengage from current conflicts, not go looking for new ones. her attitude toward iran worries me. less than mccain, yes, but more than obama. also, i think her answers regarding her willingness to speak with other world leaders are insulting, and make me worry that she’s not going to do a whole lot to improve our image around the world. do i think we should be kissing north korea’s ass? no, but i also don’t think it’s a good idea to snub them or make them angry. so as far as foreign policy goes, i think obama will be way more diplomatic, and diplomacy’s what we need right now.

as for how her campaign’s being run, i’m kind of disgusted by that as well. i used to defend her to anyone who had anything bad to say about her, but i’m not going to bother anymore. and even though i was a staunch obama supporter from day one, i still didn’t feel any kind of animosity towards her, until recently. the abc debate was the last straw for me. clinton had the opportunity to call them out on their crap questions, and she didn’t. instead, she just joined them in piling on obama, and, to me, made herself look small and petty. she’s been running a largely negative, attack-based campaign. the fact that she’s holier than thou about the whole weather underground thing when her own husband pardoned two of them is one of the lamer aspects of her attack strategy. (and, normally, i wouldn’t blame someone for something someone else did, but if guilt by association is true for a pastor, it should certainly extend to husbands as well, right?)

there’s no realistic way for her to win at this point, but she keeps going, in spite of the harm it’s doing to the party. the only way for her to win is for the superdelegates to ignore the popular vote [not so much, now], and it doesn’t sit well with me that a bunch of politicians and other various entities get to decide for us who our nominee is. she can’t win without a loophole, but still she continues, ultimately weakening obama before his fight against mccain. there’s been speculation that she’s trying to ruin him so mccain wins, and she can run again in 2012. i’m not saying that’s her intent, but she sure ain’t doing us any favors. these days, she strikes me as incredibly selfish, and i have no desire to put another spoiled brat in office.

which brings me to another reason i’m for obama rather than clinton. if this country were meant to have ruling dynasties, we’d be a damn monarchy. it pissed me off to no end to have another bush in office, and i won’t be much happier to have another clinton. did bill do a good job as president? sure, he did a lot of good things, and our budget was in excellent shape when he left. but having two families essentially rule this country for most of my life leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[and, to pick up where i left off...]

and now clinton’s accusing the media of ignoring sexism. does our media suck? yes, it pretty much does. but considering that they go after obama every time she cries foul, i’d hardly say the media has been all that detrimental to clinton recently. in fact, i assume this is why she’s bringing up the sexism thing, because every time she whines, “it’s not fair” the attacks on obama are ratcheted up. and since polls are saying she relies too much on attacks, she just wants the media to do it for her.

you know, i’d be complaining as loudly as she is. if any of it were true. as a feminist, it disgusts me that she resorts to tears and manipulative (i know that’s a loaded word, but it’s true) complaints about how unfair everyone is being to her, because she’s a girl. but they don’t! no one is being any harder on her than they are to anyone else. you’re making women look weak, hillary, and it’s crap. you get tough or stupid questions just like obama does. (in fact, he’s been getting a lot more flak than you have since you started all this nonsense.) but instead of taking them in stride, you just keep whining about what a victim you are, knowing damn well that the press, when accused thus, will fall over themselves to look “fair.” i’m not a sexist, hillary, but you’re taking all these stereotypes and fucking exemplifying them! this is further proof, to me, that you’re not ready to be president. if this is how you handle an election, i don’t even want to know how you’d handle that 3 am phone call.

maybe i am a sexist or a jerk. maybe i am a bad feminist. but right now i just feel like someone who’s been looking up to the wrong person for a long time, and experiencing the disappointment that comes with that. regardless, barack obama is someone i can believe in. i know he’ll be a great president, if he can get elected. he makes me feel like it’s not stupid to hope for a better future for this country. he makes me feel a pride i haven’t felt since i was a kid. and that’s why i chose obama over clinton.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, “Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ’spiritual counseling?’ THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”

But no, Obama won’t throw that at her. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be decent. She’s been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

-michael moore

okay, i know michael moore said this and all, so grain of salt or whatever, but really? really?

i know i don’t talk about politics much anymore on here. i’ve been following everything, but have been kind of burned out. but i just finished listening to obama’s a more perfect union speech, and i am reminded of why i’ve supported him from day one. he is an amazing speaker, and i feel like i can truly believe what he says. i really hope he wins the election in november (if he can make it past hillary’s nonsense), because we could use a president like him.

it’s one of those weird days. you know, when nothing seems to make sense and everything just seems off. for me, it started with the weather, which is crap today. and then i got kind of bummed that, despite being projected to win a majority of the states, obama is losing to hillary, delegate-wise. i know why, but it still sucks. there are a lot of independents who would’ve voted for obama in the general election who will now either vote mccain or not vote at all rather than vote for her. it’s not like i hate hillary, but a lot of people do, and i think if she’s our candidate, we’re in for at least four more years of republican rule, which i’m not sure our country can take. even if clinton does, by some miracle, win the general election, that’ll mean yet another dynasty presidency. hello? weren’t we trying to get away from monarchies? not that anyone gives a damn anymore about what the founders of our nation thought about anything.

aaanyway, back to why today seems so damn weird.

so i was at the desk, like i am every morning between 7:00 and 9:30, and the coworker i referenced a few posts back is supposed to be there, too. (i’ll call her miss daisy, i guess, because of the whole driving issue.) of course, she’s not, because she never freaking is. she’s in the lobby getting coffee. and i guess there’s this crazy homeless guy out there, and because she’s always about the dramz, she comes in making a huge deal over how he’s out there touching everything. i look from where i’m sitting, and there’s a distressed guy wandering about and, indeed, touching the coffee urns. someone calls the campus cops and meanwhile, half the department is standing around gawking at the guy. sensing that something is amiss, the guy picks up his garbage bag full of worldly possessions and hauls ass outside. and, apparently, a cop was running after him. i’m too bummed out at this point to really follow what’s going on. and the girl who called the cops is saying he’d been issued some kind of trespass thing over the weekend and he’s not even supposed to be on campus. at which point, i blurted, “well did he hurt anyone?” she said she didn’t think so. i just bit my tongue and turned back to my computer. if he didn’t hurt or threaten anyone, then who the fuck cares if he touches a few cups or a coffee urn? meanwhile, miss daisy was crowing about the fact that he was going to jail, etc. and every. single. person. who came anywhere near her got to hear the whole story, and i was about to punch her in the face. some poor, harmless crazy guy is in jail, and all she cares about is getting attention, as usual. it’s not like she brought him down herself or anything.

so i was kind of depressed about that. at least he’s out of the rain, and maybe he’ll get a meal or two. still, it’s not his fault he doesn’t know any better than to talk to himself and touch stuff. i hardly think that’s worth getting banned from campus and taken to jail for. but no one wants to look at him or be reminded of what he represents, so better to sweep him under the carpet.

today, i’m going back and forth between wanting to melt into a puddle of melancholy and wanting to punch people in their stupid faces. days like these, i just want to go home, because i can deal with the weird on my own turf. having to be around other people just makes it worse.

From this morning’s White House press conference:

Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there …

Bush: I’ve been planning that myself.

― Tim Grieve, salon.com

it’s hard not to be depressed with everything going on nowadays… you’ve got people being cremated alive in burma/myanmar (warning: super-graphic pic just under cremation story), a woman getting tortured and raped, not to mention all the stuff that goes on that no one even hears about. bloody hell.

i guess i’ll just go back to the fatherland if i want to marry a girl.

there is nothing that isn’t awesome about this.

i’m fixin’ to go shopping, but wanted to share this first, courtesy hollywoodzombies.com:

looks pretty accurate to me.

okay, okay. bush didn’t pardon libby, he “only” commuted his sentence. which is actually worse, because now libby is allowed to plead the 5th during any future questioning. sohei understands it better than i do, but it still sucks.

also, i’m trying to avoid all the chris benoit stuff, but no one will shut up about it. i haven’t felt this sort of conflicted grief since my ex killed himself a couple years ago. and i liked benoit a hell of a lot better than my ex as well. at least i wasn’t faced with my ex’s picture every time i tried to watch the damn news. yes, my favorite wrestler and hero is a terrible monster. i feel a lot of guilt over being sad regarding his death. now fuck off.

sigh.

in other news, work is going well. the commute is shorter, and the parking is terrible after 8 am, but i get there at 7, so it’s no problem. in fact, the parking lot is much closer than the one at my old job. the job itself is awesome. there’s way more physical labor compared to the old job (that’s not saying much) and i’m tired every evening when i get home, but it’s a lot more satisfying. and i get tomorrow off, so i’ll finally be writing that damn paper/presentation that’s due on the 13th.

i keep meaning to write more about my job, but when i finally get around to it, i’m too tired. but it’s very good. most things are good.

i was going to talk about how well my job is going, but i just read that bush pardoned libby, and now i’m not really in the mood. this should be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but i know it won’t be, and that’s just depressing. he’s ignored the law and the ideas that our country was founded on, and nothing will happen. he’s just proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he can do whatever the fuck he wants and no one’s going to do a damn thing. how is it that clinton could get impeached after lying about a blow job, and bush has committed war crimes, lied on multiple occasions, and runs an administration that perpetrates criminal acts on a daily basis and he doesn’t have to answer for any of it. i know i’ve been very doom and gloom about this before, but the following days are going to determine whether i give up on this country entirely. i always had some hope that maybe one day it would get bad enough for the democrats and the citizens of the u.s. to rise up and do what’s right. but now i’m not sure that’s ever going to happen. i used to think that maybe this administration was so good at spin that everyone was fooled that everything was okay. but anyone who thinks things are okay now is either an idiot or in complete denial. i mean, for fuck’s sake, presidents have pardoned friends before, but they at least wait til their term is over. this is just fucking hopeless at this point. i’m ashamed of this country, its government, and the majority of its citizens. sure, at least i have the freedom to say that, but not where anyone will hear it. and who knows when that right will be stripped as well.

i am fed up with government at all levels. i understand that bureaucracy is muddled and that fuck-ups happen all too often. but i also know, from working at a place where issues often have to go through many departments before being fixed, that every link in the chain has to care. for example, a customer calls me to tell me that she can’t find the ad she purchased and her mls feed isn’t up and running yet. she has also called and emailed a supervisor in member services about this, and he promised her two free months of service to keep her from canceling, but she still got billed this month. the minute i get that call (or email) i am determined to work solely on her problems before i do anything else. i email the ad department to check on the status of her ad, the mls department to check on the status of her feed, and the supervisor in member services (cced to my supervisor) to find out why he didn’t enter the two month bump on her order. by the end of the day, if the problems haven’t been fixed, i check back to see why. i could just send off the emails and forget about it and let each party deal with it, but things just don’t get done that way. it’s a pain, but i do it, because it’s my damn job.

i have been trying to pay my ticket for almost a month now. i only have a few more days to pay it. i tried to pay it today and it still wasn’t showing up. so i called the traffic division of the clerk’s office – again – to find out what the problem is. (i have been calling at least twice a week since i got the damn thing to freaking pay it.) she says it’s not there. and, for once, i get someone who feels like actually looking into why the hell it’s still not there when the deadline is right around the corner. she asks what agency issued the ticket, and when i tell her it was fsu pd, she says to call them about it. gee, thanks. so i call fsu pd and explain the problem and get transferred to someone who actually seems helpful. she says, according to their records, the clerk’s office signed off on the ticket (i.e. they actually received it) on june 5th. she said she’d call them and try to figure out why, when they signed for it, they didn’t seem to have it. she took my phone number and said she’d call me back if she needed any information from me. so i’m going to keep trying to pay the damn thing, and if they still don’t have it by tomorrow after lunchtime, i’m going to have to freaking call the clerk’s office again. the clerk’s office informed me that if i can’t pay the ticket by the due date, i have to go to their freaking office and submit the ticket in person. i can’t do that! i don’t have time! i am starting a new job and can’t take time off to deal with this shit! besides which, their fucking office is across town. even if i can’t pay it online, i should be able to pay it via mail like everyone else. this is complete and utter bullshit. i’ve been going out of my way to pay the fucking thing, and they can’t even find it. i keep getting told that if i don’t pay it on time, it’s not my fault and that no action will be taken against me, but forgive me if i have a hard time believing that. i can’t believe a damn word they say anymore, and i’m getting very concerned about even being able to take the damn class to get the points off my license. i just don’t have time for this. i’m going straight from one full-time job to another, and i can’t take time off for at least a month, and i still have a bunch of school shit to deal with. i haven’t even had time to try to figure out if i can take my free classes at fsu to transfer to usf, so that perk isn’t even going to do me any good until my final semester in the spring.

and as annoying and frustrating as my problem is, a lot of people have it a lot worse. apparently, the wife of a missing soldier is about to be deported. this is how we treat the families of people putting their lives on the line for their country? it seems like every week i hear a new story about how soldiers and their families are getting screwed by our government. deportation, unpaid benefits, unpaid salaries, filthy and overcrowded hospitals? what the fuck is wrong with us that we treat people this way? and it’s not just soldiers. there are husbands and wives being separated because some document got lost somewhere, and one of them is sent back to their country of origin until it gets straightened out. and fixing it can take years. years! and some couples can’t get married at all because they happen to have similar bits, and some people just aren’t comfortable with that. well guess what? it’s none of your fucking business! and don’t get me started on the recent stem cell fiasco. or the iraq budget. our government is fucked. just fucked. let this corrupt, stupid empire fall. let saudi arabia call in our debts and let china take what’s left and destroy us. the united states is not what it’s supposed to be. and the way we throw our weight around and stomp all over everyone else is coming back to bite us in the ass. let our business and industry crumble, so it can’t contribute to the continued destruction of the planet. maynard had it right in the song Ænema but it needs to be on a larger scale. fuck la, the entire united states needs to be flushed.

i know that no government is perfect. but at least some are getting smart, and there are places a lot more free than the united states. but i guess as long as everyone has their hummer and plasma tv, no one gives a shit, right?

you will be missed.

i know i quote sadly, no entirely too much, but…

I can only imagine a future Richard Cohen column where, despite the fact that he’s never actually tasted them, he praises McDonald’s hamburgers simply because he’s seen the Hamburglar try so hard to steal them. “You can tell the burgers appealed to him through his rhetoric and body language,” Richard would write. “Robble, robble!”

re: bush ii’s iraq debacle:

Fantastic. Junior just had to prove that he could tie his shoelaces All By Himself without Poppy’s help, and now his pants have fallen down and he’s peeing all over the carpet (and shitting all over the bed) – which makes the prospect of having to tie his shoelaces for him a lot less appealing.

via sadly, no!

McCain: “Cornyn, you pecker. You raised — I say — you raised the issue just to torpedo a deal. Well, you can pullet. Go get laid, you sulky cock, before you get egg on your face.” [McCain turns to the camera] “That boy thinks he’s a smart feller, but it’s just the other way around.”

William F. Buckley once famously described a conservative as a man standing athwart the flow of history, crying, “Stop!” Well, the last few years have taught us that a NeoConservative is a man standing athwart the flow of history, saying, “Huh?”

- trex, firedoglake.com

Coming: “Edwards’ Mad Aggression Reaches A New Crazed Frenzy: ‘Gosh, I think this pen is leaking,’ shrieked Edwards while madly clawing his pockets in a berserker rage.”

i was halfway through this post when explorer crashed. hooray for work computers.

anyway, i was saying that i can’t help but feel lately that some people are liberals just so they can find stuff to get offended about.

i will preface this by saying that i’m pretty damned leftist. but i also have a little common sense.

this behavior has become more evident to me lately in places like dailykos. you can’t say anything without offending or angering someone. these are people that turn the phrase “politically correct” into a joke, thereby ruining something that could’ve been forwarding the discourse. did you know that the term “soccer mom” is offensive (even if it’s true)? did you know that if you don’t support israel’s actions against palestine, you’re an anti-semite (even if you’re jewish or have jewish ancestry)? did you know that two men kissing is deadly serious, and if you laugh about it or anything to do with it, you’re a homophobe (even if you’re bi)?

come on, people.

there are a lot of things about lefties that i dislike. there are a lot of things about everyone i dislike. but i get so sick of the whining. and of the holier than thou-ness. (hey, guess what? i’d drive a prius, too, if i could afford one, you asshole.) i guess i just expect us to be better than that. and then i can see why some people hate us. sometimes, i hate us, too. thanks for making us look like the elitist wuss-bags that everyone says we are. shit.

and, while i’m at it – though it has nothing to do with liberals – stop acting like your blogging is some kind of higher art form. i’m sure some of your clove-smoking, absinthe-drinking buddies think you’re a genius, but to the rest of us, you’re a hack. stop stealing from other authors that were better than you could ever dream of being, and at least come up with your own style. i don’t call my bad poetry section “waxing pathetic” for nothing. maybe some goddamn humility would improve your writing. it sure couldn’t make it much worse. by all means, blog about whatever you want to. that’s what makes blogs great. just stop acting like we’re supposed to be awed by it.

so, i know it’s just killing you inside, but i just can’t add you to my blog list. sorry.

i’m home sick again. i had to leave work at lunchtime yesterday and just stayed home today. this flu will not die. i assume it’s the flu, because sohei is fine, and had his flu shot. if it was a cold or something, he’d prolly have it by now.

anyway…

we totally won back the house and senate. maybe now we can start getting this country back on track. raising taxes will be a good start. i have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more vetoes out of king george. i think, at this point, he’s only vetoed the stem cell legislation. if that’s the trend, he’ll be nixing any good bit of legislation coming his way. but we’ll see. maybe, after some long overdue investigations, he and cheney will be in prison. or, out of office, anyway. (hey, a girl can dream.) there was going to be a lot of additional gloating, but i’m too sick to even sit here very long. also, a small part of me is afraid that lieberman is going to caucus for the rethugs. again, we’ll see.

it turns out that i can’t post much. i need to go lie down again. but i hope to update soonish. if only sohei wasn’t so goddamn stingy with his laptop…

but there’s been 24 hours of spongebob to keep me company.

i read things like this and am ashamed about whining because i couldn’t find the perfect house. i’m lucky i get to live in a house at all. i apologize not only to my readers, but to all the people who suffer on a daily basis because they have nothing. i shouldn’t let stress get the better of me, and i must remember how much i’ve really got. not just financially, but in other areas of life as well. i realize how good i have it, and i’m sorry.

ted stevens explains the internets to the peons:

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

rotflmao

man, i’m getting sick of the immigration “debate.” thinly-veiled racism, more like. here’s my take on it, in case you care:

immigrants, legal or not, are here to do the jobs that soft, spoilt, lazy americans don’t want to do. you’d do these jobs if they paid well enough? how well would these jobs have to pay? besides, if that’s your problem with this situation, get pissed at the people that hire the immigrants, not the immigrants themselves. it’s not their fault that corporations are so greedy that they’re willing to sell out other americans for immigrant slave labor. of course, this is nothing new. companies in the early 1900s were advertising jobs and american streets paved with gold, in eastern europe. hell, in the 1800s, they were doing it to the chinese. and, like the immigrants of today, these people were sick and starving and down-trodden. they were also hated and abused or ignored. today’s immigrants are daring to stand up for their rights as human beings. afraid they’re going to take “our” country from us? well, at least they’re willing to do what it takes to force change. (for instance, mass protests, and refusing to buy anything on may 1. the irony does not escape me that their solution is to not buy things, whereas the u.s. answer to everything is to shop til you drop.) if u.s. citizens were willing to sacrifice half as much as these people, we’d be a lot better off than we are now. sure, we took texas, arizona, california, colorado, new mexico, nevada, and utah from the mexicans, but when it comes to “winning” i guess we’ll just see who wants it more. coz right now, it sure looks like the immigrants do.

viva la revolución!

[edit:] in case i haven’t made it clear, i don’t think the immigrants actually want to take over the country. they just want to be treated equally, with rights that all humans deserve. they’re reminding us how much we rely on them, and that they’re not animals put here to clean up after us and build our mcmansions. besides, the united states haven’t always been such, and a day will come when they are united no longer. i don’t know who’s going to deliver it, but we’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

and despair!

…from someone who is capable of explaining this sort of thing better than i can. (warning: more feminazi shit.)

i seem to be repeating myself on here a bit lately, so if i’m doing it again, pardon me.

anyway, on the daily kos community, last june, there was apparently some kind of war that is now referred to as the “pie fight.” (which is aptly named on a few, rather ironic, levels.) anyway, i wasn’t around for it, and didn’t really give it much thought til it was mentioned in the “cheers and jeers” segment today. so i followed the link to see what all the fuss was about.

now here’s where the repeating myself bit comes in. i’m not sure whether i’ve mentioned this on here, but not too long ago, i was following a thread on dk, and learned that many “progressive” men aren’t nearly as forward-thinking as they claim to be. it’s not okay to be racist, and it’s not okay to be elitist or anti-poor, but it is certainly alright to ogle women and objectify them, and anyone that says differently is a bitch and a whiner.

what. the. fuck.

it was around that time that i began to suspect that dk, like just about every group or society of today, is just a big boys’ club. and looking back on the time of the pie fights has only reinforced my belief. people who would almost certainly decry an ad depicting something like little sambo, become forcefully and belligerently angry when a woman complains about not feeling welcome due to an ad featuring two bimbos throwing pies at each other. (i remember this ad being on tv, and also remember duly rolling my eyes at it. but i expect that sort of thing on tv, not at a place where i should feel welcome to share my thoughts on progressive issues with people that are supposedly of a like mind.) i find that men often become defensive when women question the appropriateness of ads like these, or porn. of course, the first thing out of their mouths, inevitably, is that we’re puritanical. (i should be fair, at this juncture, and point out that a couple of women on dk were saying this as well. i think i’ve mentioned before, in my post about raunch culture, that women only say things like that so that they seem cool or more desirable to men. way to sell the rest of us out, ladies.) hey, for some women, that may be a good argument. there are a lot of people all over the world with hang-ups about sex. unfortunately for this lame argument, i’m not one of them. while i’m not as kinky as some, i am not vanilla. i have an appreciation for sex and for the human body. but when someone’s using a woman’s body to promote the idea that we’re here solely to pleasure or serve men, or that we’re juvenile and brainless, and our worth is only related to how our bodies look, then yes, i get pissed. it has nothing to do with being a puritan. it has to do with living as a woman every day of my life, and whether i’m allowed to feel like a safe, valuable member of society.

it’s also a sore subject, thanks to the powers-that-be in this country today. these people – mostly white men – want to take my body and my sexuality away from me. by mocking us for expressing our concerns, and making us to feel even more stupid and useless, you are just as bad, if not worse, than they. you are worse because you claim to be above that. you claim that we all, as human beings, have rights. but, like our forefathers, it’s obvious that some of us have more rights than others. and women, apparently, don’t have the right to speak out when they feel oppressed, because it might make some of you menfolk (and women in denial) uncomfortable.

well boo-fucking-hoo to that.

i’m not going to stand idly by while men try to take everything from me. as if it’s not bad enough that i work harder for less money, they also want to claim dominion over my uterus. they want to tell me how many kids i should have. they want to tell me whether it’s appropriate for me to have sex. they want to tell me that, if i weren’t happily married to a man, i would not be allowed to have sex with other women. and now “progressive” men, supposedly on the side of women everywhere, want to tell me to shut up, because they don’t like what i have to say.

maybe you’re not as enlightened as you think you are. well that’s your problem, and you need to stop trying to make it mine. maybe you need to wake the fuck up so that my daughter doesn’t have to put up with your son’s bullshit. so she doesn’t have to feel unsafe based on what she wears, because some asshole thinks it’s his right to do what he likes with her. so she doesn’t have to go into a job interview knowing that, if she’s interviewing with a guy, it’s all about how hot he thinks she is, and not her resume, that gets her the job. so that she can expect the same salary at that job that a man would get. so that she’s not expected to work full-time, raise her own daughter, and do all the drudge-work at home as well, because her husband’s job pays better than hers does (and so must be more difficult). own up to the fact that there’s a part of you that’s still fucking backward, and fix it, so my future generations don’t have to deal with it. don’t lash out at me because i make you question your much-vaunted ideals, and call you on the fact that, deep down, you’re reluctant to give up the power you think you should have over women, just because you were born with a dick.

i’ll sum up here by quoting a couple of comments i came across while reviewing the pie fight debacle. (and, no, i won’t be leaving dk over this, like some women did. there’s no running from this sort of thing. it’s everywhere, and you have to fight it where you can.)

Understanding the Difference
There are a number of posts in this thread that ask if we would be equally offended by some beefcake ad or an ad portraying men as morons or whatever. Some such ads might also be inappropriate for this site but I think it is important to appreciate the critical difference: the commercial representation of women as sex objects (in porn, advertising, and pretty much everywhere else) is a central mechanism in the reproduction of the dominant ideology that justifies womens oppression. The ubiquitous presence of these sorts of images creates a general climate in which (many? most? all?) men feel free to treat women as subordinate — whether this means harrassing them on the street, refusing to consider them for certain jobs, rape or just disregarding their contributions to a conversation (the latter being the most relevant to DKos).
We live in a society characterized by profound inequality between men and women that is maintained in part by a web of habits and ways of thinking that we are often entirely unconscious of but that is profoundly influenced by the mass media. If we are serious about creating a world in which people are not systematically oppressed on the basis of their sex or race we have a responsbility not to cooperate with the processes by which we are inculcated into accepting that oppression, and certainly not for a little more ad revenue!

The sorts of images of women that are tolerated in different spaces has a lot to do with the degree to which women feel welcome to participate as equals. I would suggest that one of the appeals of fundamentalist Christianity is its appearance as a relatively “safe” space for women, this in spite of its obviously patriarchal ethos. If ads like this continue to appear at DKos I can guarantee that they will chase away a lot of women (and a few men), not because our sensibilities are “delicate” but because we don’t want to cooperate in promoting oppression.

…

I don’t think the world works in such a simple mechanical way. You are absolutely right that there are other mechanisms by which women’s subordinate status is reproduced and those can include enforced modesty and sexual repression. But in THIS society I would argue that the commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality is central (though obviously sexual repression is part of the mix here as well).
I don’t think porn CAUSES rape. I do think that porn is one expression of a generalized pattern of sexual degradation of women in mass media that reinforces the tendency of men to view women as objects that can be possessed and that when men view women in this way that they are more inflict unwanted sexual attention on women up to and including rape. In a similar vein I don’t think the portrayal of Blacks as sambos in the mass media of the late 19th/early 20th century CAUSED lynchings, but I think its perfectly reasonable to think that it contributed to an atmosphere in which they were more acceptable and therefore more likely to occur.

Women enjoy greater equality in this society compared to other societies not BECAUSE of the commodification of their sexuality but IN SPITE OF IT. Women enjoy greater equality in this society because they have fought for it. The relatively recent explosion of sexually degrading imagery of women in popular culture since the womens movement of the 60s/70s should be regarded largely as part of the male backlash against feminism.

Obviously this is complicated territory. The ubiquity of porn is ALSO connected to the breakdown of a system of puritanical sexual repression that was a major source of misery in its own right.

We should oppose the promotion of degrading images of women at DKos not simply because it will drive women away, but because it is wrong and harmful to all of us.

christopher day – daily kos

[edit:] by the way, guys, your argument that men aren’t portrayed well by the media either is irrelevant. it doesn’t affect your lives the way it effects ours. the world expects us to be hot and servile. you aren’t the ones being oppressed on a daily basis, so quit trying to turn the argument around (like you always do) and make it about how you bravely face everything popular culture throws at you. when you have to put up with half the shit we do on a daily basis, then maybe you can talk.

this article is interesting, but it left me wondering: why do you never hear about this topic as it relates to women?

as most of you already know, i’m openly bisexual. if you aren’t aware of my personal history and feelings on the matter, here it is, in a nutshell: i spent years wondering if my feelings were just a phase. i realized, at 17, that it wasn’t just a phase. but by then i was with sohei, and didn’t think it appropriate to experiment. it troubled me for a long time that i wouldn’t ever “really know” if i was bi, but i’ve since figured out that you don’t have to have sex with someone to be certain of your orientation. i like girls. sex or celibacy won’t change that.

i’ve chosen not to act on my feelings, out of regard for my husband. i wouldn’t think it was okay for me to sleep with other guys, so i don’t see how it would be okay for me to sleep with women, either. i don’t expect a medal for this, but i also don’t expect to be labeled a prude. i feel that, if you respect your partner, monogamy is a given in a relationship. if you don’t agree, that’s up to you, and you can do what you like, as long as you’re not hurting your partner.

it’s when you selfishly hurt your partner, that i get pissed off.

i know, from personal experience, that not living out “that side” of you won’t kill you. just like it won’t kill you to have sex with one person, exclusively, for the duration of your relationship. i haven’t seen brokeback mountain yet (though i plan to as soon as it’s out on dvd), but the topic of this article isn’t anything i haven’t heard before. if you’re gay, that’s one thing. if you knew you were gay from the start, you shouldn’t have involved another person in living a lie. if she knew you were gay and married you anyway, fine. if she didn’t know, that’s just cruel and selfish. sohei knew, when we got married, that i’m bi. he probably knew it before i was willing to admit it, two years into our relationship. but he also knew that i didn’t plan to act on it. on the other hand, i guess you could possibly reach your late 20s or early 30s without realizing you’re gay, but i don’t really understand how. i guess you could lie to yourself, but really…

it seems different for women. (what else is new?) our internal struggles don’t get publicized. to my knowledge, they don’t get made into oscar-nominated films, either. it seems to me, from my experience, that we’re supposed to stay quiet about it. it’s not okay for us to experiment, like it was “okay” for the men in the article to pursue. unless, of course, it’s a threesome that involves whoever we’re dating/married to at the time. sorry, but i don’t want my first time with a woman to be a group activity. the idea of anyone witnessing my first, awkward attempt at sex ten years ago doesn’t exactly get me hot. yet, that seems to be the only acceptable way for a married bisexual woman to experiment. men, on the other hand, get to go out on dates, leaving their wives at home with the children.

despite the tone of this post, i’m not bitter that i can’t sleep with women. i am annoyed with the fact that, like all things in life, this topic carries a double-standard. as usual, women are forced to “let a playa play” while they’re expected to shut the fuck up about their own feelings, and go on being good wives and mothers. or, go on giving their husbands a good show.

is democracy dead in america? should we even bother to vote anymore?

i provide the link, you decide.

“Your words were deeply hurtful to many innocent and decent people,” Abramoff wrote. “One day the truth about my son will come out and there will be a lot of people in your industry and others lined up to apologize for their efforts to destroy him and our family.”

the truth? well, despite a lot of people’s best efforts, it looks like the truth has been revealed already, mr. abramoff. your son is a scumbag, and a prime example of what’s wrong with this country. he destroyed himself, and though george clooney had nothing to do with it, i’m thinking karma did. maybe if you’d realized your son’s faults sooner, instead of being in total denial, you might’ve raised a kid that didn’t make his living cheating just about everyone he came in contact with. so i have a real hard time feeling sorry for you or any member of your family. karma’s a bitch, ne?

I remember sitting in front of the TV as the 2004 election results came in, and as the dark reality of what had occurred surrounded me, I suddenly felt tears streaming down my cheeks. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “what the fuck, you’re crying about politics”? But I wasn’t tearing up because of politics. I was tearing up because I am an American. I love my country, and I could foresee the wounds this President would inflict on our nation. I felt desolate, lost, and hopeless. But I soon found hope again. Where? Not in the words of Biden, or Reid, or Obama, but in myself. I knew that this liberal inside of me would never die, no matter how red the world became around me. So don’t look for hope amongst career politicians; you’ll find it fleeting. The truest hope–the type of hope that sparks social change and progress–comes from you, and the fact that you’re here, giving a damn, while millions in this country do not.

So let those who don’t have the stomach for this fight stand back and let us who do lead the way. Because we cannot live a life of regret. I hear so much of what we will lose if we get into this fight, but what of what we’ll win? There is so much to be gained by taking our stand, here and now. And I want to be part of that. When I have children, I’m going to look them in their eyes and tell them that yes, your mother was there. When the rest of the nation was blissfully unaware of the fate that had befallen us, me and a few million of my anonymous friends stepped up to the plate and saved this nation from the brink of fascism. I’ll them I was there when Congress rallied up and shook off the yoke of its President King. That I was there when the clock was running out and America’s back was up against the wall–and I helped her fight back. Never will I utter any phrase with more pride than “I was there.”
-georgia10, daily kos

over lunch on saturday, sohei and i were discussing the “angry liberal” myth. of course, this is part of a long list of things where we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. if we stand down in the interests of harmony, we’re wussy hippies. if we dare to get upset about anything and – gasp – vocalize it, we’re “angry liberals” trying to undermine the government and the country itself. traitors, if you will. for the purposes of the topic, we determined that there are two major kinds of anger going on in america right now: righteous anger and petulant (self-righteous) anger. we defined righteous anger, in this case, to mean being angry on the behalf of others. petulant anger was defined as anger on the behalf of oneself. righteous anger is getting pissed about the treatment of the poor in this country, or the ongoing rape of our environment. (sure, technically, i suppose being angry about the environment may fall under petulant anger, since it also affects us on a personal level. but most people don’t seem to get upset about it on a personal level; mostly for unselfish reasons.) petulant anger is getting mad because someone cuts you off in traffic or you can’t buy something that you feel you’re entitled to. examples in both cases are pretty broad, but you get the idea.

this isn’t black or white, of course. (most of the things i talk about aren’t. i just tend to speak in absolutes when i’m ranting.) a person can experience both types of anger, often in a short span of time. however, a lot of conservatives like to point at liberal righteous anger and either laugh at how much our lives must suck, or use us as an example of how not-angry they are.

first off, let me point out that i would far rather get pissed off at injustice toward someone else than a (possibly perceived) injustice toward myself. getting mad at an unfair act that has been inflicted on me seems like a pretty big waste of energy. i think the same people that feel a smug sense of satisfaction at our “suffering” are actually, on the whole, a lot more angry at life than we are, and for different reasons. because i don’t feel like i’m constantly under attack every time i hear a dissenting opinion, and i don’t often have this bizarre sense of entitlement that a lot of my fellow citizens seem to have engendered, i think that myself and people like me, are actually a lot happier than those that continually experience petulant anger. these people just take life too damn personally. though i would like to point out, in fairness, that i am guilty of episodes of petulant anger as well. most of the time, it occurs when i’m online, and someone’s charging for something that, i feel, should be free. i assume this is because it isn’t a personal interaction, and so it’s easier for me to forget the work that some faceless person had to do to provide me with the service to begin with. thankfully, i’ve come to recognize this as a knee-jerk reaction, and i find myself being more rational about it lately.

anyway, my point is that righteous anger hasn’t ruined my life. i think that i am far more satisfied with life than someone who gets angry over perceived injustice a million times a day, because someone else owns something nicer than they do. am i over-simplifying things? i wish. i know a lot of people, personally, who seem to constantly strive for more. i guess it’s the american dream. but they never seem happy with what they have. if you call them on it, they claim that they are. but minutes later, they’ll start talking again about wishing they had a bigger house or more money, etc. while my life isn’t perfect (whose is?) and i’m not happy all the time, i do feel a general sense of satisfaction about my life. hey, i’m just happy to be here. i spent a lot of years cursing the fact that i was born, but finally realized, what’s the point? if you must be unhappy and suffer, at least do it on someone else’s behalf. put that energy toward fixing problems bigger than your own.

which ties into my ignorance is bliss post from the other day. it seems like the majority of people believe that if they pretend nothing is wrong, all the world’s ills will just fix themselves. well, i got mine, so i can act like i’m happy (while seething inside that i can’t own the designer clothing and accessories i’m entitled to.) who cares if the polar bear is dying out? those “angry liberals?” they like getting pissed off about things that no one gives a shit about. they’re always unhappy. not like me. but look at history. where would women be today if the suffragettes just shrugged and figured someone else should worry about whether they got the vote. or if civil rights leaders felt that they’d be a lot happier if they could just go home to their families at night instead of residing in jail – or the morgue. oh, that’s right. you’re the sort of person who probably lacks real empathy towards others. you’re a white guy, so you don’t care about the rights of others whose skin doesn’t look like yours. (or, worse, you’re bitter about the rights they’ve managed to get for themselves.) or maybe you’re a woman that’s more concerned with getting to the mall than getting to the polls. who gives a shit who the leader of the free world is, as long as you can get your hands on a gucci handbag? whether you appreciate it or not, we did not get the rights and freedoms we have today by just sitting on our asses with fake smiles plastered on our faces, unconcerned with the plight of others.

righteous anger has fueled nearly every positive change this nation has ever seen. those with true righteous anger sacrifice their false happiness to help make the lives of others better. while we can’t all be as great as susan b. anthony or martin luther king, we can each do our parts to try to make the world better. petulant anger and selfishness get us nowhere. so just keep telling yourselves that you’re happy, america, and that everything’s just fine. even if you are honestly happy, at least try to think of others once in a while, and do the right thing for their sake.

while i’m satisfied with my life, i am not satisfied with the ways of the world. if this means getting angry or sad sometimes, so be it. we all get upset now and then, because that’s human nature. but we can also decide, for the most part, what we let ourselves get upset about. and what we choose to do with all of that otherwise negative energy. we can put it towards something positive, towards change. or we can just stew in it, becoming farther removed from our fellow man, sinking deeper into apathy and our own petulant anger.

true.

i was reading a diary on daily kos this morning, when i came across this:

Why the Constitution is Irrelevent
Perception is reality. And ignorance is bliss. This country is no longer guided by the Constitution because of the confluence of two factors. The media, now corporate owned and controlled, has abdicated its position as seeker and distributor of the truth in favor of maintenance of a status quo that accomplishes nothing except the enrichment their bank accounts. Just as perversely, the American public has abandoned its civic duty of remaining informed about, and actively participating in the political process. In fact, the public has sunk even lower than this: they freely choose to willingly be ignorant, and through sheer intellectual laziness have decided that reality-based thinking requires too much effort, and instead turn to faith-based “reasoning” and subjugate themselves to the “authority” of those that “know better” than they do. The media churns out its loud, bright, and shiny propoganda on a 24/7 basis, and this perception becomes reality when no further effort is then made by anyone to seek any knowledge independently. The republicans literally are “creating reality”, because they are creating and controlling what we see and hear. And the american public just sits cowering in our bubbles of denial and pray “please, please don’t take away my SUV.”
-Progressive Liberaltarian

he managed to put into words what i’ve been thinking for a long time. it upsets me so much that a vast majority of american citizens have become such sheeple. there’s more to life than what you own or getting ahead. people in this country can’t see beyond their own noses. we either spend all our time grieving over what we don’t have, or living in apathetic complacency, fat on our own excess. if you have a place to live and food on the table, you’re way ahead of a lot of people, so quit whining and think about what you can do for someone else for once. and there are so many people, trodden so deep down into their ruts that they can’t imagine fighting for their rights. they only have the strength to fight for mere survival. (the jungle really opened my eyes on this subject.) the crimes we let our administration get away with due to sheer laziness is apalling. it gets frustrating for those of us paying attention because there’s only so much we can do on our own. until a sizable number of our population comes to realize what’s happening to them, there isn’t a whole lot we can do.

and people are realizing, slowly but surely. i was reading a story the other day, written by a woman whose son is serving in iraq. apparently, he’s pretty much starving over there. so, of course, as his mother, she’s very upset. but she also admitted to having voted for bush – twice. it was only when his policy directly affected her life that she began to get upset. this seems to be the case for so many. someone loses their job, or, worse, a loved one in iraq. then suddenly the blinders are gone, and they can see our corrupt government for what it is. maybe if people weren’t so intellectually lazy (and i don’t mean stupid), and had some sort of real empathy, they would have realized the truth, and not only not supported these selfish acts, but fought against them. but once a person is victimized, he or she is too often too depressed to fight.

it all comes down to something i’ve often complained about: selfishness. as long as someone is still getting theirs, the rest of the world can go to hell. it won’t be long, however, before people begin to realize that man is not an island, and when we, as a country, go down, we’re pretty much all going to suffer. and i’m going to make a sweeping generalization here, but it’s my blog, so i can: conservatives are mostly very selfish people. anyone who voted for bush is, when in comes down to it, incredibly self-centered. did you vote for him because he was going to lower your taxes? selfish. (and stupid, if you’re not rich.) did you vote for him because you thought the war in iraq was the right thing to do? unless you’re fighting over there, selfish. and if you have a loved one over there that becomes a victim of this senseless atrocity, i bet you’ll be changing your tune, like a lot of former bush supporters. did you vote for him because he’ll strike down abortion and/or gay marriage? really, really selfish. keep your religion to yourself, and off my body and out of my bedroom. what right do you have to tell me what i can do with my body, or who i can marry? you don’t. and if you voted for him due to religious idealogy, you’re about the most stupid and selfish of all. believe it or not, you don’t have the right to dictate what everyone else does, based on your belief system. if you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. are you a woman that voted for bush? or a minority? thanks for shooting yourself in the foot, then shooting the rest of us as well. you’re supporting your own subjugation. if you’re not a rich, white, straight male, the party has no use for you – except as voters, and thanks to diebold, your useful idiot status is in grave danger.

i don’t care who i piss off. people need to wake the fuck up and see where this country is headed. and if you think you’re safe, chances are you’re in denial. this administration has shown that it doesn’t give a fuck about the constitution or your rights. and while you’re under the bed, bleating, “here are our liberties, just save us from death!” keep in mind that this will come back to bite you in the ass someday. try thinking about someone else for once, before it’s too late.

maybe those of us who are paying attention and have a clue will be able to get the fuck out of here before the shit comes down, but, sadly, i doubt it.

i heard on a comment thread on daily kos today that the u.s. may attack iran as soon as tomorrow. while i’m not sure i buy that, it was a scary thought. the source – which was pretty suspicious itself – was talking about nukes and everything. i hate that things in this country have come to the point where i’d even have to worry about something like that; that we’d nuke someone again. why is it not okay for foreign nutjobs to have nuclear weapons, but it’s a-ok for our own leading nutjob to have them? i wouldn’t trust that guy to bring in my mail for me if i went on vacation. the idea of trusting him with nukes…?

someone has indeed cursed us to live in interesting times.