The press has come up with some pretty fucking proggy rules for reporting violence against women.

You hear that America! That’s the sound of a latin, machismo based culture kicking your ass in evolution!

Ouyandan did it! I swear. She’s a bit of teh evil, that one.

Two memes for the price of one!

6 Things About Me.

Teh Rulz:

1. Link to the person who tagged you

2. Post the rules on your blog

3. Write six random things about yourself

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them

5. Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the instigator (in this case, Renee) know when your entry is up.

On to the good stuff.

1. I am afraid of weird shit touching my feet, which is why I cannot stand to walk on grass or swim in natural places because I am 100% sure that tiny, ghastly critters will EAT MY FEET!

2. I never ever use a brush on my hair. Ever. On the rare occasions when a hair stylist person cuts it, they marvel because I have very long healthy hair without a single split end. I also don’t use conditioner unless it’s winter.

3. I sing while I cook, loudly. Since I am going to be sharing a kitchen for the first time in my adult life, I am worried about how my new roomies will take to my kitchen crooning.

4. I collect luggage like some girls collect purses. I have a vintage trunk, some old Samsonite hardcases, a full set of eggplant colored wheelys and my tiny pink travel pack that I can carry 3 weeks worth of clothes (while still fitting it in the overhead compartment).

5. I smell like a french pastry. My perfume is made of vanilla, coconut and heliotrope.
I’d much rather smell like something someone wants to eat than something someone just wants to sniff at for awhile.

6. I cannot pee if I think a boy can hear me. I am working on overcoming this (one bathroom- 5 people, 3 guys, YES we do pee while people are showering).

Ok, now 8 places IN THE US that I would pick to live that are in the US (or your own country of origin)

I don’t like this one- so I am not going to follow the rules. I want to live in OTHER countries.

1. Trieste, Italy because it’s where they import all the coffee to be roasted in Europe and the air smells awesome.

2. Barcelona for the food (olives, jamon serrano and cava being 3 of my favorite things)

3. Campeche, Mexico- it’s a gorgeous candy colored sea side town with a kick ass local baseball team.

4. Anywhere in Greece (you all know what archeology does to me, right?)

5. Udaipur, India _ because I can’t get over my love of the hot Indian boys

6. Budapest, Hungary- natural hotsprings all over the city, meaty red wines and it’s where my dimpled nose and cooking skills come from.

7. Buenos Aires! To learn to tango from the origin, natch

8. San Francisco- for the schools.

I tag Soopermouse, Redstar, Pocochina, Quin, Rabble Rouser and Annabelle

Current total is just $225 away from the goal! You people fucking rock! have i told you all that?

I went and wandered around my future bedroom last night. Oh my god it’s giant. After smushing in with the Kid for the last two months (dear gawd spare me from the smell of teenage boy funk and dirty feet!) The idea of having a space i can close off and hide in is sooooooooooo happy making you can’t even understand.

I’ve been musing on ways that men can stop rape, even when they aren’t rapists, after my chicken and egg post and Anglachel’s great follow-ups.

Here’s how I see it.

Women are considered “the weaker sex” (which I never understood, but wevs). If we are doing something that is viewed as beyond our strength and we are hurt by men while doing it, then we carry the blame for being hurt. If we walk alone at night, if we take a masculine job(see rape rates in the military for that one), if we allow ourselves to forget for one single second that we are one the edge of perpetual victimhood, then when we become victims, it is our own fault. (Mind you this is not my opinion, this is what I am observing). If you are a mouthy woman, your husband will hit you. If you don’t wear enough clothing to act as a shield between you and the rapists of the world, then you have committed a giant act of hubris.

But on the other hand, we value weakness in women. Look at the bobble heads. We expect women to starve themselves into tininess. We give them attributes that are soft and yielding. And plenty of us girls don’t fit that mold of femininity. I sure don’t. And plenty of boys prefer that, but society tells them they are wrong.

Right now, there is a sweet boy who has been on my radar. But I am continually thrown for a loop by his masculine posturing. He wants to be the big strong man, which is fine. Except that in his head I have to be the weaker woman for him to be that. There are lots of references to the fact that I am shorter than him or that he outweighs me. After a few years of dating men who I either outweigh or am taller than (and if you’ve never gotten the thrill of getting to tower over a boy- seriously you should try it) , it’s a weird feeling for me to be thrown back into a traditional “little woman” role.

And I am trying to figure out how you could possibly form a solid partnership in a relationship where one person is always supposed to be stronger than the other. How is that valuable? But it is what we see as the ideal. We see men as the big strong protectors. And again, I can’t see how I fit into this world. I have always been the protector. Of myself, my family, my friends. I am that crazy stranger who jumps into domestic violence situations to diffuse the problem.

But women like me aren’t valued (and truth is I think all women have it in them to be the strong ones, we just swallow down our courage and are forced to play the part of waif).

(Bah– There was a whole point to this post that I lost in the typing. Consider it stream of consciousness blogging for now. )

Via Corrente– the US Dollar Death Dance

Are Americans last to realize the financial structure destruction means the US Economy does not enter a recession, but rather a bizarre unprecedented disintegration? It seems so. The liquidation of speculative positions, the massive de-leveraging, the payout’s of defaulted bonds, these events are the opposite of developments toward revival or resuscitation, like business investment!! Liquidation is the exact opposite of investment, and precedes job cuts, not job creation.

There is much much more. Read the whole thing and pray that Obama gets a sense of Rooseveltian ingenuity between now and January.

Rabble Rouser at Everyday Rebellions.

The Sex Map- How well traveled are you?

Let’s just say that my passport is well stamped.

And since I can abuse a transition like no one else….

Last weekend I went and played Urban Golf with some friends. We used nerf balls around Capitol Hill and each bar was a hole. One of my team mates is a brilliant girl, who I like a lot. But in the past she has been more than a wee bit judgmental towards me re the fact that I am a mom who (gasp! shock! horror!) likes sex and doesn’t hide that fact with copious amounts of shame.

I got a drunken, unasked for and unexpected apology. I didn’t need it. Again – I don’t think the fact that a grown woman knows what she likes and asks for it is a problem, but it does mean that sex talks won’t have to be quiet so tedious in the future.

To get attention for missing kids who aren’t blonde and blue eyed?

I am sooooooooooooooo close to the goal and it’s all because of you peeps.

Right now the official count is $1210.54, or less than $300 to go.

You peeps are rad, you are my sunshines, etc.

Big lip smacky smooches to each and every one of you!

On my way to work everyday I pass by a tent city, what we are calling Nicholsvilles here in Seattle. From the bus it almost looks like a cheerful thing with all the bright pink and blue tents donated by some outdoor company. It isn’t until you start looking at the people that populate it that you become aware of the sad reality.

And all I can think of is how much easier I have it. Sure the Kid and I have been without a place to collect mail for the last few months. We’ve had to tread lightly to avoid annoying our generous friends in any way that might make them reconsider their generosity. We’ve had to share a small room and lost all our furniture. We’ve had to master cooking on a hot plate and keeping the kid from having asthma attacks while staying in damp basements.

But we are inside, warm, safe, and surrounded by people who love us. We are not targets for derision or scorn or violence from the public and the police. We do not have to fight everyday to prove that homeless does not equal worthless. We are so close to being like the tent people, but even in poverty there is a hierarchy. We are at the lucky top.

One of my problems is that I have enough eduction to see the systemic nature of the challenges (blockages) that have kept me in poverty. I know the trap of pink collar work that looks respectable on the outside but never pays enough to bring actual respectability. I know that drugs and alcohol are just ways of masking the sad perpetual hopelessness of life lived on the edges. What I don’t have is enough education (the on paper, can put it on a resume kind) to be able to fix it, for me or anyone else.

But this week has taught me that since I cannot do it alone, I am the luckiest girl in the world because people, awesome, faceless people, will help me.

And the truth is that all human advancement has been because of those kind of actions. We think that it is competition that pushed us to the top of the food chain, or the independent nature of a few lone geniuses through time who have launched us into our present state. But the most radical human advancement ever, more radical even than opposable thumbs and upright walking, is language.

And language is a cooperative, social thing. Language only works when people agree that certain sounds or symbols mean the same thing. It only works when there is a mutual cooperation to understand something outside of either party.

Because of language I can sit here in a basement in Seattle and bunch of people who I have never met are helping me to get one of the most basic human requirements.

I want to use the same language skills that have made me so very lucky to help those down the pole. I’m not sure how yet.

(This is a long meandering post which wasn’t/isn’t very clear in my head. You peeps are getting the raw babbles again- sorry).