So I am currently at $999.43 in the house fund. You peeps are so amazing, I’ve been teary eyed for almost 2 days straight.

There is so much anger, so much to be righteously pissed off about, that it is sometimes easy to forget that there are also some incredibly kind and generous people in the world that make society worthwhile. And you peeps are those people.

I’ll be dropping thank yous via email and sorting out who needs a Ruby story or whatever else their heart desires in the next few days. But right now I fell like the luckiest girl in the world. And I can’t see the keyboard cause my eyes have gone all drippy.

You all get Gossip Videos

(Note- I am sticking this post to the top for reasons of shameless self interest)

So the Kid and I have found a home, if I can come up with first, last and deposit by November 1st.

Even with my super shitty recent rental history (see the eviction of Summer 08) we have found a safe home that we can share with friends who are willing to cut us some slack on the rent. What they can’t do is come up with the cash I need to get into the place.

So my dear friends and readers, you can take direct action to help the homeless in these horrible economic times. I need donations like Bush needs a soul and a clue.

I am not without some means of barter though. Anyone who donates $100 will get a personally hand crafted story featuring themselves and Ruby the Hamster. $200 and I will design a custom blog masthead for you. More than that and I’ll donate an egg (seriously, you just have to look at my ovaries hard enough and the eggs start magically dividing).

Got something else you want or need and think I might be able to provide it- just ask and I’ll do it!

UPDATE: So the little timer thingy on the donation box seems to not work quite right. Right now I need $1275 $1085 more. I’ll keep updating here when stuff changes.

Blue Lyon has a post up with snippets from Andrew Sullivan about why he blogs.

Why I blog is simple.

In this world there are lots of rich, white, overeducated men who get their voices heard. Blogging is a way for me as a poor, undereducated woman to get mine heard.

That’s it in a nutshell

My blog can current;y be foudn at http://soopermouse.blogspot.com. It is no longer at http://enfc.blogspot.com. Please update your blogrolls 😀

And I fell off my chair laughing. Because, no offence? This is like the wolf endorsing the shepherd. I guess, as the lovely peeps at Corrente have put it, “Anti Iraq” joins the rest of us under the bus.

But seriously, Colin Powell? Who’s next, Pat Buchanan? Oh wait. He already did.

Fuck me. Backwards.
So the guy who runs for presidency because he gave a speech anti Iraq at a time when he risked nothing by doing so, followed it with no action whatsoever and still has the audacity to claim he was right is now asking and receiving an endorsement from one of the Iraq War’s architects?

Hillary was a bitch because she voted for AUMF, but Biden isn’t. And Obama’s anti war stance goes only as far as saying he’s against it. Who’s next to endorse him? Bush or Condi Rice? Too bad Saddam is dead. And Stalin. Boy, I would have loved to see those endorsements.

The ridiculousness of this is beyond words.

Except for the fact that it fits. Powell’s dirty record started in Vietnam, ad still continues. Maybe it makes sense that one corrupt pol would endorse another. Doesn’t it?

If it would not fuck up the whole world, I would wish nothing worse on the Obama supporters than to have Obama win. Then I would sit comfortably in my democratic country, drink the coffee I can afford in my affordable flat without fear of a heart attack, since, after all, we do have nationalized healthcare, and laugh at them getting what’s coming to them. Loudly.
But it doesn’t work that way. Thus, the problem.

This is who you are, this is who you are associating with, this is what you are endorsing. Don’t you fuckign dare turnyour eyes and complain about the violence. If you even for a second consider voting Obama in the generals- you are that guy.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uN2eZtAPLiY

Do you see the pattern?

I was having a conversation with a boy about rape. He told me a horrible story about a girl he knows who was drugged at a bar and then dragged off with a broken limb so that some asswipe could rape her.

This lead to the “rape prevention” conversation (note that dude is not an asshole, he’s just a victim of the patriarchy, but he’s trying so I try to be gentle).

Here’s the thing- women CANNOT prevent rape.

Say it again.

Women CANNOT prevent rape.

Women are not raped because they are in the wrong place, or wearing the wrong clothes, or behaving badly. Rape is not a punishment for societal infractions. Rape is a crime committed by a rapist. The only difference between a drunk naked girl passed out at a frat party and a rape victim is the presence of a rapist. Rapists do not spring forth magically from a mixture of beer foam and female pheromones and vulnerability.

Dude and I started talking about how we can stop rape. I am of the adamant opinion that women have done everything they can in that regard. Women cannot prevent rape. Women cannot stop rape from happening. We have spent the last 100,000 years or so trying to prevent it, and yet it still happens.

Because in the end, rape has very little to do with women. We are victims of it. And being raped feels incredibly personal, but it has little to do with us. It is about men and power and we are the objects they destroy to reinforce their place in the universe.

And when we are objects, we have no power to change our status. A toaster or a broom cannot complain when someone uses it against its will.

The only people who can stop rape are men because men are the rapists.

Dude thinks that everyone needs to work to change it, that women need to work just as much as men do to stop rape.

Except, we aren’t the rapists. And we have been working on preventing rape since forever. And I for one am tired of tailoring my behavior out of fear that some rapist will see me coming like a bright shiny beacon of potential cum dumpster status.

Dude thinks, however, that women need to quit with the slut shaming (agreed) and victim blaming (doubly agreed. And that is where we come to the chicken or the egg question. Does ending slut shaming/ victim blaming actually end rape?

I think not. I think that ending rape ends rape. If there is no rape, there is no victim blaming. Period.

Not only are you the origin of some of the most beautiful people on the planet (huhmmm hot Indian boys) but lately people in your country keep committing acts of violence that I agree with.

First, a bunch of laid off temps went ballistic and killed a CEO.

Then an Indian woman who had been stalked for months beheads the asshole when he tried to rape her.

I know, violence not the answer, blah blah blah (you all know I wanted to be a revolutionary as a kid, is it sooooo hard to imagine that I’d be supportive of these kinds of things.)