Category Archives: On My Mind

It’s what I’m thinking about at the moment…

Studenting: I’m Doing It Wrong

Animated gif from The Big Bang Theory - description in body text

I’m deeply worried that this is my current status as a student this semester. Woe. I have a quiz that I must take in the next 25 hours and I haven’t completed the reading for it. I have another class that has only 3 tests over the semester, with 8+ chapters of reading (over 3-4 weeks time each) for each, and I’m behind on that reading too. I’m just not digging in. Meanwhile, I said I was going to drop down to 1/4 time with my paid work, billing out no more than 20 hours a month. I’m already at 21 hours, and it’s only the 9th. Oops.

I gotta get it together.

(Thank you @elizabertsays for this image.)

[Image description: Sheldon from the television program "The Big Bang Theory," a tall, somewhat gangly white, brunet man, takes a handful of papers and tosses them up in the air, causing them to cascade around him and down the floor. He has a lackadaisical expression on his face. The caption added is "look at all the fucks I give."]

HANDS CLEAN IS SUCH AN AMAZING SONG.

garlandgrey:

Point of honor, will fight somebody, etc.

If it weren’t for your maturity none of this would have happened
If you weren’t so wise beyond your years I would’ve been able to control myself
If it weren’t for my attention you wouldn’t have been successful and
If it weren’t for me you would never have amounted to very much

Ooh this could be messy
But you don’t seem to mind
Ooh don’t go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We’ll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you’ve washed your hands clean of this

You’re essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me
You’re a kind of my protégé and one day you’ll say you learned all you know from me
I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian
I know you sexualize me like a young thing would but I think I like it

Ooh this could get messy
But you don’t seem to mind
Ooh don’t go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We’ll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
I’ve more than honored your request for silence
And you’ve washed your hands clean of this

What part of our history’s reinvented and under rug swept?
What part of your memory is selective and tends to forget?
What with this distance it seems so obvious?

Just make sure you don’t tell on me especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world cause you’re such a pretty thing when you’re done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body

Ooh this could be messy and
Ooh I don’t seem to mind
Ooh don’t go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We’ll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have than honored your request for silence
And you’ve washed your hands clean of this

[TW: Homophobia, Assholery] Dan Savage Fails Again, Still Gets Fellated By Fans

Read Dan’s devastatingly bad advice in a protracted exchange with a young lesbian in Ireland.

So let me get this right.

Dan Savage:

  • tells this girl a flat out gender essentialist lie about women’s sexuality being more fluid than men’s.
  • says that he knows this lie to be true from his experience, which translates to “I know some women who said they were lesbians but they married men.” Never mind that this isn’t his experience, never mind that identifying as a lesbian has nothing to do with who you marry. (I know three lesbians who are/have been married to cis men. It doesn’t change the fact that they are lesbians.)
  • tells this girl who is already in a Catholic convent school being taught by nuns to just tough it out if her parents force her into reparative therapy, as if it’s nothing more than a challenging chemistry course or an exercise boot camp and not an emotionally and spiritually abusive and debilitating horror which has driven who knows how many kids (and adults) to self-doubt, self-harm and even suicide, which he should know as the alleged font of all (cis white male) gay knowledge.
  • fails, even after learning this girl’s location, to even try to suggest even one actual resource for her, anywhere that she could turn to find help to avoid being forced into abusive “counseling” or even just someone she could talk to. Apparently his Google was broken.
  • publishes all of this massive failure.
  • lets commenters do the work and come through with queer support resources in the girl’s location, rather than leaving her with the glib suggestion to tough it out and hang on because… Oh, right, because “it gets better.”
  • and the pig still get lauded and praised and tweeted about as a hero. As if he did something. As if he helped. As if he didn’t lie to the girl. As if he didn’t give her potentially fatal advice to just grin and bear her homophobic parents’ abuse.

A hero.

What the hell does this man have to do for people to recognize him for the dangerous asshole that he is? Burn someone’s house down? Send a hurting, scared kid a weapon? Just go ahead and counsel self harm because the endorphin rush provides “relief?” What?

I really need to know.

Komen: Aftermath: A Personal Reflection

The Susan G. Komen Foundation pink ribbon logo with the red circle and slash forbidden symbol over it. I am about to get personal in a way I rarely do, and emotional in a way that I haven’t, in this space. Bear with me.

My maternal great-grandmother died of breast cancer. She had 14 children.

Those 14 children were evenly divided. Seven daughters, seven sons.

My grandmother died of breast cancer.

All six of my grandmother’s sisters had breast cancer.

Five of my grandmother’s sisters died of breast cancer. The sixth is still with us after battling it three times.

But that sixth sister? Her daughter died of breast cancer at age 43. She left behind two daughters of her own.

And the seven brothers? Not unscathed. Each of them with a daughter has had a daughter with breast cancer.

Three of those daughters have died. Two also left behind daughters of their own as well.

This disease has more than decimated my family. It’s orphaned my mother and her sisters. It took my favorite aunt, the one I spent summers with as a little girl. It took my grandmother. It’s left my young cousins motherless girls. Girls need their mothers.

For me the fight against breast cancer is extremely personal.

For years my family has supported the Susan G Komen foundation. We’ve walked in the 5ks as a team, the survivors so proud in their pink shirts and hats. We’ve bought the pink ribbon items. Every one we could find. We pooled our money to buy my cousin the pink Kitchen Aid stand mixer to celebrate the end of her chemotherapy. All of our cars have sun fading in the shape of the pink ribbon magnets we happily stuck on our bumpers.

This isn’t political for me, beyond the continual fight for single-payer healthcare. Had some of the women in my family had earlier and stronger access to medical care they may have been spared the loss of their health, the loss of their breasts, the loss of their lives.

This isn’t political for me, beyond the continual fight in favor of what is derisively called Obamacare. I know as a person with pre-existing conditions, it is the only way I will have access to medical care. I am now in the age window when women in my family receive their first diagnoses. I have to be careful.

The Komen foundation has been selling us a bill of goods. They lobbied against improved and expanded health care access, breast cancer care access, for poor women.

And now this defunding of Planned Parenthood. (Don’t be confused by the headlines. Funding is “restored” but only for this year, and only to some affiliates. Next year? No one knows. And I think Komen is counting on us not remembering and not paying attention.) they made it political.

On a purely personal level I think I made it clear how I deal with my political opponents.

Some people are calling this partial restoration for 2012 a “victory” but for me? Victory will be the day that the Susan G Komen foundation no longer exists.

As for me, in the name of all the women who came before, whose memories I must bear as a legacy of the devastation of breast cancer, I vow: not another penny not ever again.

The Susan G Komen foundation has destroyed its goodwill, has squandered its good name. They did it long ago but we didn’t realize it then. Now we know. I for one will not forget.

I hope that you won’t forget either.

Not another penny. Not ever again.

Fund planned parenthood. Fund your local health clinics. Agitate so that no one has to rely upon charity and the goodwill of organizations to get basic health care, a human need, a human right, any more. We are better than that. We can do better than that.

Not another penny. Not ever again. It’s time for something new.

Will you help me find it?

Undercover Nun is a Paypal Conscientious Objector & You Should Be Too

undercovernun:

Undercover Nun has removed the PayPal donation box from the sidebar.  Why, you might ask?  Because of this:

Endorse Liberty, a super PAC supporting Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, received nearly a million dollars from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, new documents show.

Thiel’s $900,000 makes him the single largest contributor in the short time since the PAC was founded on December 20, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Since founding PayPal in 1998, Thiel now runs the hedge fund Clarium Capital. His net worth has been reported to be at least $1.5 billion.

I’ve set up an Amazon Payments account, but I haven’t replaced the donation box widget.

Paypal has long been a horrible, horrible company. We all know this. It’s time to kick them to the curb.