Horrible Facebook Poll

"Should a woman be forced to give birth to her rapist's baby?"

Answers: Yes, No, Maybe.

Voted No, of course. As did 90% of the voters. But there are still 7% yeses and 3% maybes, and a lot of debate going on that's incredibly infuriating--talk about all those LIVES being KILLED because of the FATHER. About how the INNOCENT BABY doesn't deserve to SUFFER. About how HE could be the next EINSTEIN. Or WHOEVER.

People (I use this word loosely). If you are making this argument then you are advocating rape*. If it would be so sad for these fetuses to not live due to abortion, then you are saying that these fetuses are so important that they should live at any cost, hence if the fetus' father had not raped its mother, then it would not have a chance at life, and to y'all, that would be tragic. THIS SENTIMENTALIST ARGUMENT IS PRO-RAPE. You might as well say that rape should be legal, because it COULD lead to a pregnancy which COULD create the next Einstein, or Your Best Friend, or A Really Awesome Preacher Dude.

Logic. Get some.



*This point generously provided by C. L. Hanson in comments here.

Songs for today: I cannot be the mother of someone who is three months older than me edition

Yeah, I know these are both about dudes. (Well, not necessarily, especially the second one, though I do think the first is probably about a man. Romantic partners, at least.) Don't really care, my roommate irritates me to no end. Can't fix a toilet? Fine. But when I say I'm going to class, can you call the maintenance people to come fix the toilet, then you can call the maintenance people to fix the toilet, while it is still normal business hours. It's called being an adult.

And this is not the first instance of her incompetence. Not by a long shot.

Therefore, some Sleater-Kinney.

Song for today

It's about Portland, Oregon. But it reminds me of Cleveland, my town. And it makes me happy, which I need after tonight's episode of Glee, which I do want to write about, but not now. Therefore, "Light Rail Coyote," by Sleater-Kinney.

Glenn Beck should crawl into a hole and be eaten alive by badgers (Weekly Bastard Report)

Because this pisses me off so fucking much.

You don't get it, dude. You have no frame of reference to see how much this sort of comment is so clueless and hurtful to those of us who have been through rape, sexual assault, anything like that. You don't actually give a shit about us, you're just using a cheap metaphor for funsies, to get your point across, for a shock value of it, I don't know.

And had you been in the room when Polanski was raping that girl, I doubt you would have done anything to stop it. Because you could care less about human beings, their lives, health, whatever. And all the shock value would have been right in front of you to soak in.

If I had a million dollars I'd buy a backup computer

(Actually I wouldn't, there are better things I could do with the money, like donate to anti-MTR groups, but go with it for now.)

...but I don't have a million dollars, so I only have one computer, and therefore when one of them breaks I can't just switch to a different one. And telling me to do so on Facebook will only piss me off, especially when you don't know the entire story of what's wrong--my computer is not broken, Microsoft Word is just being an ass! As is my flash drive! And causing me setbacks as I try to write a paper that I don't feel like writing anyway! Because it's not the ecofeminism one, nor is it a short story about a road trip to get an abortion!

Gah, fuck.

Read this. It is awesome.

Bev May is awesome.

And I am an outsider, and I can concur with commenter Alexa Mills--most people outside of Appalachia do not know what mountaintop removal is. I didn't know until I read Strange as This Weather Has Been. I have to explain it to people all the time.

That is all.

I really hate this article

Scroll to the bottom to see why!

Note to whoever wrote this: you do not fucking 'dispose' of animals. I know that wasn't really what you meant, and the suggestions are (sort of) good, but that's bad bad bad wording there. Also, don't discuss it with the class after the activities. Discuss it before getting the animals in the first place. Make sure that they'll have a place to go post-activities. You're talking about 10-12 little animals here. Living creatures, got it?

Also, crayfish are not really social creatures. The people at the pet store where I ordered mine say they can keep five of the little ones in a ten-gallon tank together with lots of hiding places. A ten-gallon tank is huge, and I only have two little ones in mine (with lots of hiding places.) Much bigger than a bus tray in which whoever wrote this expects five or six medium crayfish to live. And if you're planning to watch them molt? Crayfish hate being disturbed when molting! And in this situation they would inevitably be disturbed. And there's not a single word here about gravel. If you have pet crayfish, they need gravel, period. They like digging and hiding, a lot, and a few Elodea plants will not accommodate this need well enough.

And as for the whole 'aquarium' idea? Better get a giant fucking aquarium if you want to keep 10-12 of these without some serious aggression happening. Then again, it'll happen in your lovely bus trays anyway. Same idea if they go home with a student. Have a fish tank? What did you keep in it? A nurse shark? An octopus? A sea turtle? It'd've better've been something like that, because that's how much room you'll need for 10-12 crayfish!

Holy fuck. This is just a bad idea all around, one that will probably result in a bunch of dead crayfish, and that just pisses me off.

2009: Awesome year for writing

Remember this? Well, I wrote the first (shorter, 7-page) version paper last weekend, turned it in Monday, and got it back today. Got an A. And a note from my professor telling me that it was original and astute and that I might want to think about getting it published sometime.

Which, of course, I do. Sooner rather than later, but I have to write the longer version first, and I probably won't start looking into this publishing stuff until next semester, when my workload could be lighter as I'll only be taking one 400-level course as opposed to 3.

But OH MY GOD. This makes me so happy. Writing-wise, 2009 has been AWESOME. The Appalachian Writer's Workshop? All the awesome poems? This paper? The short story I turned in for my fiction class that got a lot of praise?

I'm on a roll. And feeling so good.

Oh, and I have two lobsters now. They sent me a second one by mistake. So we'll see how this works. The second one is named Sonoma.

Also, I now know how to make salmon, really damn well.

Irritation

People who throw the words "politically incorrect" in all over the place to make things seem more interesting. See here. It is not "politically incorrect" to say "there are some people out there who are racist and/or put a lot of importance on a person's race when it comes to deciding who they want to date. This therefore affects who gets the most responses on online dating sites, and here's how it breaks down." That's obvious. Everyone with half a brain knows that. It would be "politically incorrect" (aka indefensibly rude and stupid) if one were to say "all these people with their half-baked assumptions are RIGHT, and the reason black women aren't asked out on dates online is because they all DO have X, Y, and Z negative traits." Or, as it would more likely be phrased by one of the typical "we're-so-politically-incorrect, we-don't-care-about-anyone-else's-feelings-except-straight-white-thin-temporarily-able-bodied people, aren't-we-so-hip-and-cool-and-edgy" types: "Um, hee hee, we know this isn't cool, but, ha, you are all so [whatever], let's laugh at you."

(I really fucking hate the words "politically incorrect," if you couldn't guess, and anyone who prides themselves on being so probably needs to look in the mirror and ask why they feel the need to be such a privileged git all the time.)

A song and a warning

Be Your Own Pet, "Take That Walk"



I signed up for Pandora recently, input Sleater-Kinney as my favorite band, and Be Your Own Pet is one of the bands that came up as 'similar.' I agree. I like them. And of course, they're defunct.

Now, since I looked up the lyrics to "Take That Walk" on letssingit.com, which used to be my favorite lyric website, I figured I'd warn y'all why it isn't anymore--it is so damn viral! Namely, it's one of those websites that will open up windows telling the reader to download fake anti-spyware that is actually spyware, because "[their] system is infected." And this has happened before and I should have learned, but now I'm fed up, because while I know what to do to get rid of this crap, not everyone does, and fake anti-spyware spyware is fucking evil. To be clear: my computer was badly infected by this crap in January, the day after I got into a car accident and realized that some 'friends' of mine were creepy and/or mean and/or not willing to stand up for me. I didn't need anything else on my plate, but I had to completely reboot my computer and spend a ton of money on an external hard drive which then mysteriously stopped working in May (don't buy Seagate, folks, which pains me to say as a Scandinavian). So yes, I hate those programs and their creators with a passion, they are the end result of rampant renegade capitalism, and if I had a million dollars and as much times as I needed I'd track them all down and sue their pants off.

But in the meantime, I can warn people of affected websites. And tell the site managers of my issues as well.