Happy Hellacious-Terribly painful-Horrendous-Yet Somehow Joyful Day of my Birth to me April 9, 2009

Every year on my birthday, my mother calls nearly every hour throughout the day to give me updates on the progress of my birth. This is a yearly tradition with her, though who knows why she wants to relive such a traumatic event, year after year after year. But, none-the-less, she finds this highly amusing.

7am: Happy Birthday! You’re not born yet though… but I’ve been in labor the past 26 hours.
9am: At the Dr. yesterday for a stress test because you are two weeks overdue. Yep, labor is confirmed! Come back later when the contractions are closer.
10am: Been at the hospital all night but only dilated to a 2. You don’t want to come out!
11am: Keeping taking the monitor off and the nurse is yelling at me to keep it on. Whatever, get this kid out of me!
12pm: Horrible painful night! Dr. came in and said, “Oh, you poor thing. I am going to order an epidural right now.” Fucker didn’t come for another 4 hours.
1pm: Anesthesiologist says, “so looks like we have had one too many ice creams during our pregnancy.” NOT something you tell a pregnant lady who is in labor! Didn’t want to piss him off with a smart ass comment since he had a 6 inch needle in his hand though….
He says arch your back, i say wait, i am having a contraction. He says, “that’s fine, I want to put this in when you are.” FUCKING ASSHOLE
So he does, he hits a nerve and I literally bounce on the table from the pain.
“Oops” he says.
2pm: Your dad goes off to get coffee because I won’t let him sleep. “If I have to suffer through this, so do you. Wake up asshole!” So he is gone and all of the sudden the nurses come screaming in my room, they are unhooking me from the monitor and doing all sorts of things to the bed. They say the baby has had a bowel movement and we need to get her out, so down the hall they roll me into the delivery room. C-Section!
Funny thing: your dad had to put on scrubs to come into delivery room and they were light yellow and he had on blue underwear and you could see them through the scrubs.
They slice me open and I immediately get air under my shoulders. The pain is horrendous but there’s nothing they can do. They have strapped me down so I can’t move my arms. You are stuck under my rib cage and they can’t get all of you out so they have to push you back in and finally, after 20 min, here you come!  Your shoulder is bruised and red from being stuck. The doctor proceeds to sew me up and then comes and stands next to me and tells me it was a very hard delivery. Then I proceed to throw up on her.
3pm: I pass out and wake up to a nurse pushing on my stomach to help the after birth come out or some bullshit story. I grab her arm in tears and beg her to stop but she says she has to do this. I am so sore from the doctors pushing on me to get you out! I pass out again, wake up in another room, but I don’t see you until 6 or 7 that evening. I can’t hold you because my stomach is hurting.  They give me morphine, which made my face itch.  Anyway that is the way you came into this world.  Happy b-day sis!

So yes, I came into this world in all my shriveled, pink glory after giving my mom hell for 36 hours, which she reminds me of yearly lest I forget! Thanks mom! Love you.

An Unfamilar Feeling April 6, 2009

I caught part of Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament this morning on CNN, and from the brief section I was able to watch, I was extremely impressed.

I say this as the president of a country that not very long ago made it hard for somebody who looks like me to vote, much less be president of the United States. But it is precisely that capacity to change that enriches our countries. Every challenge that we face is more easily met if we tend to our own democratic foundation. This work is never over. That’s why, in the United States, we recently ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. That’s why we prohibited – without exception or equivocation – the use of torture. All of us have to change. And sometimes change is hard.

Another issue that confronts all democracies as they move to the future is how we deal with the past. The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.

Human endeavor is by its nature imperfect. History is often tragic, but unresolved, it can be a heavy weight. Each country must work through its past. And reckoning with the past can help us seize a better future.

I’ve not heard many politicians even admit to the past misdeeds of our country, and to here our president speak of such things is extremely refreshing to me. Bush was not the type of person to ever admit to doing anything wrong, which is why many outside the U.S. have lost respect for our leaders. Being able to admit you were wrong, to admit imperfection, and to acknowledge that the U.S. makes mistakes (horrible, consequence-riddled mistakes) and can change… well, that’s something that gives me pride in my leader. For the first time ever.

I might have to get used to this pride thing. It feels kinda funny, like an itchy new sweater.  I’m used to my worn, comfortable righteous indignation. But… I’m open to new things. Maybe, if I like the way this fits, I might throw out my ragged, ill-fitting shame and my tattered anger. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Aparently, his comments were well received.

Kiran Chetry: In all, how was our president received in the muslim world?

Hisham Melhem: Well, judging by the positive headlines, by the live coverage that my network and others gave his speech yesterday in front of the Turkish parliament, the Muslim world likes what the president has been saying. Not only in Turkey, but since he was elected. And I think his words and, more importantly, his actions, have resonated positively throughout the Arab world and the Muslim world. People realize that there is a new tone, that there is a new content, that there is a new language. Gone are the combustible words that President Bush used to use like Islamo [sic] Fascism. Now the new president talks about engagement, he talks about partnership, he talks about respect, mutual interests. President Bush seemed to many Arabs and Muslims every time he talks to them as if he is talking down to them, as if he is lecturing them. This new president is trying to engage them as potential partners in the fight against the real enemy of the United States and the real enemy of these governments which is al Qaeda. The president doesn’t talk about the war on terror in general because the war on terror is a war on a tactic. He has a well-defined enemy called al Qaeda. He doesn’t clump like, President Bush, all Islamic groups. He focuses only on al Qaeda. All of these things, they are nuances and people recognizes nuances and they appreciate that.

In defense of legalization March 31, 2009

Legalization talk seems to be cropping up a lot lately. After Obama’s disappointingly dismissive answer regarding legalization during his internet Q & A, a lot of people have been weighing in on the issue.

Jack Cafferty says:

Here’s something to think about:

How many police officers and sheriff’s deputies are involved in investigating and solving crimes involving illegal drugs? And arresting and transporting and interrogating and jailing the suspects? How many prosecutors and their staffs spend time prosecuting drug cases? How many defense lawyers spend their time defending drug suspects? How many hours of courtroom time are devoted to drug trials? How many judges, bailiffs, courtroom security officers, stenographers, etc., spend their time on drug trials? How many prison cells are filled with drug offenders? And how many corrections officers does it take to guard them? How much food do these convicts consume? And when they get out, how many parole and probation officers does it take to supervise their release? And how many ex-offenders turn right around and do it again?

So how’s this war on drugs going? Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That’s a perfect description of the war on drugs.

And he’s totally right.

Marijuana is by far the most widely used illegal substance in the United States. More than 70 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once, and over 20 million have smoked it in the past year. However, the pursuit of stopping this use is costly and inefficient. Each year the government spends billions of dollars on ineffective programs justified by the War on Drugs. In 2003, the federal government spent over $19 billion. Combined with the additional $30 billion spent by state governments, the War on Drugs cost nearly $50 billion in one year.  This money could be justified if the programs were effective. However, it is clear that we are fighting a losing battle. While the aim of the program is to halt or slow the flow of drugs, reports suggest that only 10% of drugs are interdicted by law enforcement. That is not enough to justify $50 billion.
However, the real cost of the war on drugs is the increase in crime and destruction of lives that are a direct result of the processes used. Specifically, the African American community is adversely impacted by our pursuit of stopping marijuana because of the racial disparities in drug sentencing. While the majority of drug users are white (five times the amount of any other race), blacks comprise the bulk of the drug offenders actually sent to prison. Nationwide, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at thirteen times the rate of white men. This disparity is evident when you compare the rates of incarcerated blacks to whites; one in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison. This compares to one in 180 white men. The effect this disparity has on the black community is staggering. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “of the nation’s 72.3 million minor children in 1999, 2.1% had a parent in State or Federal prison. Black children (7.0%) were nearly nine times more likely to have a parent in prison than white children (0.8%). Hispanic children (2.6%) were three times as likely as white children to have an inmate parent.”    All for what, a simple drug violation?

That’s insane.

Introducing Papal Birth Control! March 27, 2009

Remember this?

Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients. “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Now, introducing the NEW Pope Condoms! These condoms are specially formulated to “increase” the spread of HIV. Made of genuine AIDS material, these condoms are guaranteed to cause the user irreparable damage to their health and life! Brought to you by the makers of Guilt and Eternal Damnation. Please use responsibly.

Today Sucks March 25, 2009

Today has sucked for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was having to take my GRE this morning with a fucking awful migraine. Then, I get to work and read all of this lovely shit:

Via Broadsheet

Thought you could snark away recent efforts to establish the “personhood” of a fertilized egg with a couple of North Dakota jokes? Think again. The “personhood” movement is gaining quasi-hip grass-roots momentum. Legislators in five states have introduced bills that would grant constitutional rights to the “pre-born” from the moment of fertilization; bills have already passed not just the North Dakota assembly but also the Montana Senate (and petition drives are reportedly under way, or close to it, in Oregon and Mississippi). (Colorado: FAIL.) “We won’t rest until every state recognizes that pre-born babies are persons, just like you and me,” says one activist in the introductory video on Personhood USA’s pre-spell-checked Web site. (In a sloppy/sly sleight of rights, the video also passes off the Declaration of Independence as the U.S. Constitution.)

We all know that establishing the “personhood” of microscopic Americans is a means of characterizing abortion — legally, and even culturally — as murder. Though the Supreme Court decision making abortion legal turns largely on the right to privacy, it also notes — in an aside that has become anything but — that if fetuses were “people,” they would be entitled to protection under the 14th Amendment, ergo entitled to “life.” The Center for Women Policy Studies has stated that “legislative efforts to establish fetal patienthood, victimhood and, therefore, personhood represent the primary threat to Roe v. Wade.”

More backwards Oklahoma shit via Okie Funk

When Richard Dawkins, a former Oxford University professor and famous evolutionist, recently came to Oklahoma to give an academic presentation, it created a spectacle that continues to embarrass the state.

State Rep. Todd Thomsen (R-Ada) introduced a House resolution criticizing Dawkins’ visit to the University of Oklahoma. The resolution claims Dawkins’ views “are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.” Dawkins, an atheist who often criticizes creationism, responded by mocking the resolution during his speech and posted a video about it on his popular Web site. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. His speech was a part of activities examining Charles Darwin’s ideas and research. (Darwin is pictured to the right.) [...]

State leaders also need to understand that reports of the local anti-evolution movement make their way through scientific and other intellectual communities throughout the country and world. These reports make the state seem backwards, isolated and unwelcoming among groups of people that could help move the state forward. This has the potential to hinder efforts recruiting top scientists and faculty to work in the state. This, in turn, hurts our students.

It also sends the wrong message to Oklahoma scientists, science faculty members and other faculty members. It tells them to avoid discourses, theories and research that might offend certain politicians or be labeled controversial. This applies to virtually all disciplines, and it could ultimately have a major dumbing-down effect on our students.

The maddening trolls over at Feministe:  (Although I love the way they deal with them)

Troll #1

Let’s face it, the primary cause of single motherhood is fornication. Fornication is a sin, whether Liberals want to admit it or not. People like the Rev Al Sharpton, who are supposed to be preachers of the Gospel, would do more good for their people if they would preach the Biblical Gospel: repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. As it now stands they preach the gospel of big government and entitlement. This is seductive to their followers but continues to create the misery that generally follows sinful behavior.

Troll #2

Maybe Obama will legalize prostitution. Think of the money the hookers will make and the money the baby killers will make! It could turn our economy around.

I mean we might as well start breeding as soon as they can so we can kill the babies and call it “choice” or (my personal favorite) “a women’s choice”. And the teenagers are how old? Here’s a choice, keep your legs together. Or in the case of rape, kill the rapist. Oh… I’m sorry, the baby’s not innocent are they. They are the guilty ones, how dare them to try to be born! YOU LIBERALS ARE SENDING AMERICA TO HELL! Honestly! Please move!

I don’t want you ungodliness (and please don’t tell me you are a believer like Obama does and murder babies) or your ignorance to rub off.

I guess we will turn the war on terror back on the babies of the women who can’t “Just say NO”. And my tax money will be spent on teaching young girls to sleep with every guy the meet and call it “Planned Parenthood”. REALLY? We are teaching them to be Parents? Let’s see. Kill your child, don’t get married and go get pregnant again and do the same thing. And YOU PEOPLE think the abstinence believers are wrong? UNBELIEVABLE.

Via ThinkProgress

Yesterday, as President Obama was delivering his second press conference, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) spoke at the NRCC’s largest fundraiser of the year to an audience of more than 1,200 Republicans — including prominent luminaries like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

In his speech, Jindal turned to one of the major issues facing the GOP: whether it agrees with Rush Limbaugh’s statement that he wants Obama to fail. Without mentioning Limbaugh, Jindal criticized the recent focus on the remarks, claiming that anyone who disagrees with President Obama is treated as committing “treason.” On whether he personally wants Obama to fail, Jindal simply said, “it depends“:

Make no mistake, anything other than an immediate and compliant – “why no sir, I don’t want the President to fail” is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience, or political obstructionism. This is political correctness run amok. […]

I will not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kow-tow to their political correctness. We will be the loyal opposition. So… my answer to the question is very simple — “Do you want the President to fail?” It depends on what he is trying to do.

To which I can only scream… I mean, the Republicans bitch and moan about liberals being unpatriotic and anti-American if they criticized Bush (remember the Dixie Chicks?) and yet they’re complaining about the same treatment? Not that I really care if they criticize Obama… they’re perfectly entitled to say ‘I hope he fails’ cuz damnit, I wish Bush had failed too. And I am unpatriotic and anti-American and don’t care who calls me that. But people, really. Stop being so hypocritical.

Why aren’t there rules about obnoxious children in public? March 23, 2009

Why do my thoughts always sound better when Cafferty says them?

Some parents still have this attitude that their kids are too special to be burdened by discipline. And the rest of us are supposed to put up with their little mutants. That attitude really pisses me off.

I hate to break it to them, but the kids aren’t special, and I don’t have to put up with their behavior. If you can’t control your obnoxious little brats, leave them home.

They don’t belong out in public annoying other people, period. I don’t remember a generation of kids ever so indulged and enabled to behave so badly. What’s going on?

I remember as a kid I was expected to behave myself out in public or suffer the wrath of one very angry father. And of all the things that used to piss him off, those expectations didn’t seem unreasonable. Something’s gone terribly wrong here. My guess is it has to do with the breakdown of authority, the collapse of strong family structure, and the abdication of parental responsibility, dictated in part by the necessity that both parents work.

Plus, we have a whole generation of Baby Boomers who are too busy feeling entitled to prolong their own self-indulgent, self-absorbed adolescences to rein in their own kids.

Well said Jack.

In Pursuit of Harpiness March 16, 2009

Friday night I set aside my prejudices against the patriarchal establishment of marriage and disdain for giggling girls to attend a friend’s bridal shower… and I survived, barely. The beginning of the evening was okay, we had dinner and drinks while she opened her presents (all of the “honeymoon” variety) and everyone just chit-chatted with the people around them.

However, after dinner, the conversation turned to marriage and children (it was a bridal shower  after all).  Of all the women there, I was the only one who had not been either married, engaged, pregnant, or with children at any point in my life. So, while they gushed about weddings and babies, I sat awkwardly trying not to grimace. And then they turned on me.

It began innocently enough when one of the girls, who happens to know of LMC, asked how he was doing. Then the feeding frenzy began…

Girl 1: Who is LMC?

Girl 2:  Her boyfriend

Me: Oh well, not boyfriend exact–

Girl 3: How long have you been together?

Me: Umm, well, we’ve lived together for 2 years but um, we’re not—

Girl 1: Are you engaged?

Girl 3: When are you getting married?

Me: Um, well, we’re not. Neither of us really want to get married…

Girl 1: What do you mean you don’t want to marry? Everyone wants to get married.

Girl 2: Oh you just say that, wait till it happens.

Me: Well—

Girl 2: So, Lindsey, when are you due? Do you have a name yet?

Yeah, at this point I was disregarded as someone not fit to converse with because I didn’t want the same things as them. They hear the word ’single’ and treat you as if something is wrong. The words ‘not engaged’ are met with sympathy, as if I have some sort of illness… “It will all be over soon.” And frankly, I’m just so fucking tired of it.

I know I’ve said it again and again, but I don’t want marriage or children. I find the thought repulsive. Luckily, so does LMC.

But these women are relentless. Obviously, because I am a woman, I must want the same things as them right? I must badger my significant other into buying me an overpriced, blood-stained diamond and I must throw a fit when it doesn’t happen fast enough? I should drag him to the alter and then pop out as many children as I can while my fertility lasts? I’m supposed to crave children and start nesting right away? I’m supposed to be happy as my belly swells and strangers touch me while offering advice on how not to screw it up? I’m supposed to be overjoyed when this alien creature comes crawling out my vagina, right? This is what I’m supposed to want?

Well I don’t.

Stop harassing me.

Progress March 9, 2009

Finally, people are coming to their senses!

Front page of USA Today:

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:
• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.
• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.
• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or “born again,” was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

Oh, to live to see the day when atheists (and agnostics, free-thinkers, humanists, and the generally non-religious) outnumber the wackos. That, my friends, will be a glorious day.

Things are looking up.

Sick of being sick February 27, 2009

I’ve been MIA due to a friggin’ nasty cold. While managing to wade through the mountains of snot-laden tissues to find the computer was tempting, I managed to resist. After all, I was just being considerate… not wanting to infect you with this super cold bug that spreads through cubicles and computer screens. I caught it from a friend in California after all.
Okay so I managed a couple of tweets in the interim… and its not that I don’t love you guys, its…yeah, well, I don’t love you guys that much. I was too fucking tired.
I still am, hence the intellectually devoid content. So bear with me a few more days and I promise I’ll come up with something amazingly insightful and thought-provoking. Or maybe just something only half-stupid.
We’ll see.

Recommendations February 23, 2009

Go check out:

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon

Compare and contrast the levels of outrage Americans had for these two different yet related stories: 1) Michael Phelps smokes some weed, hurting absolutely no one and 2) this:

A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.

The latter story would, in a sane world, be the one that matters more and generates more outrage.  But it is the story that requires we Americans to actually take some fucking responsibility for the hell we unleash on countries that are supposed to be our friends and neighbors, like Mexico.  The remarkable thing about the Phelps story is that most of the people viciously condemning have probably smoked weed and aren’t sorry about it.  But they enjoy getting into a sanctimonious snit over the evils of drug use, so they don’t let that kind of hypocrisy bother them.  Unfortunately, our national hypocrisy about drugs is super-deadly on the Mexican-American border. That is, after all, why this war is going on—to control the trade routes to get drugs to Americans using criminal methods because drugs are illegal in America.  (And Mexico, too, but they appear to have more of an export issue than an import one.) To really face this story would be to face what we don’t want to—either everyone who uses drugs stops, or we give up the War On Drugs.  Only one of these is realistic.  And while we have plenty of drug addicts in America, we have even more sanctimony addicts who need their fix.

Wendi Muse at Racialicious

I want to go ahead and put it out there that I take issue with the bulk of missionary work (past and present), especially that which takes place in developing nations. It is a reminder of the power of nations who sit firmly and comfortably in their G8 seats, spectators in a game of international tennis. Only in the case of missionary work, the victory comes at a higher price, one that can mean not only renouncing one’s culture, but also one’s religion (or at least denouncing it in public) as a means of attaining vital resources.

[...]

In light of my objection to this line of work, I find myself dealing with a mental conflict almost every day of my present job. My campaign has nothing to do with God, but in terms of international influence, the English language and American culture come pretty darn close.

M. LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D.

Last night, I attended the Yes Means Yes reading… When I left, my mind was buzzing, and at night laying in bed with my boyfriend I must have rambled non-stop for forty-five minutes about all the things I was thinking about, the new concepts I’d been introduced to. In particular, I was sort of shocked at how common sexual assault was among this group. Every presenter, and many people who came up afterward and said “I was raped.” People who knew people. And I was thinking that talking frankly about rape is such an important part of what happens in the feminist blogosphere, and even though we’re a fairly prominent feminist blog, it’s not a part of the set of personal experiences we talk about here. I don’t know whether any of my fellow contributors have been through sexual assault, and I’m not challenging them to say so. But the fact that I consistently think of myself as someone who has not been sexually assaulted is a shining example of the way this discourse is extremely limited.

Because I have been raped.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon

Last night on Hardball, I watched Pat Buchanan take on Michael Eric Dyson on Eric Holder’s comments about America’s cowardice in terms of discussing race.  First, what Holder said was true.  Second, watching that show was like watching a ferret take on a uncovered table fan.

[...]

Buchanan pointed out the sad statistics that plague the black community, from crime to family structure.  But he did the very thing that makes an honest conversation on race so terribly difficult to have – he treated the statistics as if they simply arose out of the ether, the product of a series of conscious decisions on the part of black people to sling drugs and live in ghettos.  But the history of America, even to this day, revolves around how the white majority has chosen to shape our communities, and the steps to which they’ve gone to mask the nature of their decisions.