So yesterday was attempt #2 at girding my loins for the current War on Women (aka getting an IUD while I still have medicaid -those things cost between 750 and 1000 bucks- and before this country takes the skids right into Handmaid’s Tale territory).

Unfortunately, even a dose of misoprostyl (one of the handy forms of medical abortion) to “open things up down there” didn’t work. My innards are shaped like a snail. I knew something was up when the doc asked “how long ago did you give birth?” My response “the Kid’s 16 and he was a c-section. I never dilated” did not encourage her. Thankfully, she’s not a macho cowboy. She poked around for a few minutes and declared that it was time for a specialist.

Bonus, they gave me the actual IUD to take home with me since they can’t give it to another patient. It comes in what looks like and extra long cigarette carton.

We then talked about meds and pain and stuff. She made me dial my Vitamin D way the fuck down. I even told her that if it’s a choice between daily pain or killing my liver- the liver should DIE! She didn’t find that as funny as I thought she would. I took a quarter of what I normally take last night, and today I can feel the owies setting in. Grrr.

She also prescribed potassium and magnesium. And the regular drinking of tonic water. “So I can tell people when I have my nightly cocktail that it’s FOR MY HEALTH!” She said that it didn’t have to have the alcohol, just plain tonic works fine. I gave her a look that is halfway between a Whatchoo talkin about Willis? and a Dorothy Parker, she relented “okay okay, have your vodka tonics.”

(So of course I came home and had rum and cokes instead, because I am broke and the Boyfriend left a professional alcoholic sized jug of rum here. Someone tell me rum has therapeutic value!!!)

Wherein my son explains the origins of Justin Bieber.

This is a story. One day Satan was really bored. All the dead souls were (for once) making him sad. He tried taking a bubbly bath, but that didn’t work. He went to see if God was open for a game, but he was playing with fluffy bunnies. Finally, he tried to cheer up by going to Earth and getting a drink. But sadly, it was rush hour, and all the bars were crowded. But at that moment he had an idea. He would possess a human to torture the other humans. He went to Canada and found a little boy named Justin Bieber. He saw he found his perfect target. He went and possessed him, and unleashed the cries of a thousand tortured souls. But Satan was tricked by God. God made Justin Bieber famous somehow. But that was good for Satan, because he could torture more humans. That is why Justin Bieber’s singing is terrible and horrifying.

Now you know.

A study by the Pew Center shows the racial wealth gap has been getting wider recently, with black and Hispanic Americans falling far behind white and Asian-Americans. This item popped up several times in my Facebook feed, posted by liberal friends with no comment or context as if it were a deplorable act of God. They somehow neglected to mention that this was occurring on the watch of America’s first president of color.

Barack Obama was overwhelmingly supported at the polls by the very people who are being hit hardest by the current depression. Yet he has not lifted a finger in defense of their economic interests. Trillions are poured into Wall Street and wars, but nothing is being done for working people of any color –people who need homes that retain their value, a safe place to live and to do business, sane credit, jobs that pay a living wage, the means to stay healthy, support in their old age and a decent education for their kids. The Obama Administration has telegraphed its hostility to these needs in numerous ways: inaction in the face of the foreclosure crisis, advancing cuts in Social Security, prioritizing reduced spending over economic stimulus.

It is not the abstract concept of ‘privilege’ that is doing this. It is real, living people in positions of power, including the President of the United States, who are implementing privilege, if not oligarchy, by accelerating the flow of resources upwards. Privilege existed in the 1990s yet working- and middle-class Americans were better off. It is mendacious, insulting to the voters and condescending to the President of the United States to refuse to associate his name with the policies of his Administration and their consequences.

It’s time to name some names and point some fingers.

The boyfriend and I had this interesting little email convo last night about politics and economics and how do you judge something when you don’t know all the behind the scenes machinations of 12 dimensional chess players. Here are a few snippets.

“I hate 12 dimensional chess as a metaphor. It means the people who use it think us citizens are to stupid to understand what’s going on. Yes, politics is complicated, but it’s also very simple. Judge politicians by what they actually do, not what they say. It’s easy to (as Chris Matthews said about Obama) get a tingle up your leg when someone makes a passionate speech. It requires not much more work to look at what actually gets done.”

Boyfriend wanted to talk about Obama’s big compromise, which the Republifuckers rejected, and if that makes Obama either a bad negotiator or a brilliant tactician who just made Reps look like the douchenoodles they are. I think neither.

“Both Dems and Reps are talking austerity with the debt ceiling. Austerity has been proven (over and over again) to be a bad fucking move in the middle of a recession. Even Nancy Pelosi is using the fucking “shared sacrifice” meme.

So, if both parties, even if they differ over how much pain should be delivered upon the bottom 80%, are talking about austerity, then some form of austerity is what we are going to get. There isn’t another option being discussed and Obama has flat out said he won’t use his constitutionally granted executive power to make the fed continue printing money. That is how I judge them by their actions, because their actions show what the agenda has been set to. “

And just a friendly, but desperate, reminder. I have 10 days till I get a paycheck. I haven’t been able to buy more than 50 bucks worth of groceries at a time this month, so the cupboards are stark. And all the bills are past due (internet may be the first thing to go). If you’ve got something you can throw in the pot, royalty will smile on you and probably offer you a title. Would you like to be the Duchess of Badassery? Lord STFU? Baron von Snarkitude? Seriously, it’s pretty grim around here.

It is never fucking surprising when some asswipe goes on a mass killing spree to find out that he is a/they are misogynists, through and through.

The patriarchy is real, and it is deadly. And it is global. It happens here, and in Brazil*, and even in nicer than nice Canada. And now in Norway.

It’s also no coincidence that most of these scumbags are religious extremists** (of whatever flavor of religion) because it is religion that writes down rules for male dominance and makes them law and makes the killing of the people who break those laws righteous in the eyes of fanatics.

*The BBC article doesn’t say it, but 10 of the 12 murder victims were girls (at a co-ed school).

**Of course you can be an atheist and be a misogynist (cough*richard-dawkins*cough) as Marc Lepine in the Ecole Polytechnique killings was.

Ok peeps, here’s how it stands. I’ve got 2 weeks till I get my first paycheck. It looks like I’m not going to get food stamps this month (there’s $300 I have to make up for) and it’s costing me $25 a week to get to work.

I need help covering groceries and bus fare until the 4th of August (about $250). If you’ve got a little extra to spare, please throw it in the pot. Hopefully, this is the last time I’ll need it. Hurray employment!

that when people, particularly political people, use the word “pragmatic” what they mean is “amoral opportunism”.

That is your deep thought for the day, as I have made the pragmatic decision to go to work.

So today I went and opened up checking and savings accounts at a local credit union. I’ve managed to live bank free for all but 2 of the last 10 years. (Honestly when you look at the rates of cashing checks at check cashing places and grocery stores vs. overdraft fees, I am way better off without a bank account).

But new job only does direct deposit. So off to open an account I went. And I managed to find a poverty-friendly (but not poverty exploitative) tiny (like 12 people work for the entire credit union) with a serious non-profit commitment to expanding credit access to the community. Win, right?

And in Washington state you can join ANY credit union as long as you are a resident of the state. Sweet.

Also, the checking is free with only 10 bucks to open it ($5 for savings). The other places I was looking (Boeing Employees Credit Union, for example) required $100. Which I don’t have. Actually I almost never have $100 that I can spare for a few days to a week. Ever.

But I still feel a little dirty having a checking account at all. Perhaps it will wear off when I get a real, live paycheck!

There is a gaggle of children and parents out on the shared terrace that my living room is just off of. It’s a lot of kid’s playing noise (not annoying) and squeeing parent noise (annoying). But fine, that’s the price of being urban.

One little girl gets her toy stolen and gets hit by another little girl. She gets upset and says “you’re mean! I don’t wanna be your friend anymore”. (A perfectly rational reaction, in my opinion. She didn’t hit back. She used her words.) The girl then gets dragged off by her mother and the mother starts telling her that even though it was wrong for the other girl to take her toy and hit her, it wasn’t okay for her to call her mean and not want to be her friend.

What? Why the fuckity fuck is it not okay, “not nice” for her to tell the other kid she didn’t want anything more to do with her after she acted like a toy-thieving bully?

This is one of those thousands of little moments where, from the time we are tiny, we are told that it is more important to be “nice” than it is to be safe.

And yeah, it’s just a playground kerfluffle. But the kid did exactly what we want kids to do if a grown-up touches them in a not-nice way. What kind of mixed fucking message is it when we force them to play with someone who has hurt them?

So kid, upon hearing her mother tell her that she needed to go apologize to the kid who hit her because she said some “not very nice things” starts screaming and making gagging noises “mommy I wanna go home, mommy I don’t feel well, mommy please”.

Oh for fucks sake. Ugh. The rage. It burns.

So I’ve been reading a bit more about the Dawkins shit while thinking about why Dude A (marriage proposal guy) and Dude B (serenade guy) didn’t register a creepy factor, but Skepchick’s elevator dude did.

Dude A, as I am walking past him, smiles and says “You wanna get married? You looking for a husband?”. I giggled and said “No” and continued on my way. He didn’t block my path (it’s happened). He didn’t look me up and down(happened more times than I can count). He didn’t get mad when I turned him down (again, more times than I can count). He didn’t chase after me screaming “fucking bitch” (no, really, that happened). He didn’t keep bothering me to get me to change my mind (ladies, we all know those guys). He just smiled and walked off in the opposite direction from me.

With Dude B, I actually started the conversation. He was asking the guy on the bench next to me for a light and I said “I’ve got one” (sue me, I’ve had a minor, ok not so minor, setback in the quitting smoking war. I go back to ~mostly~ not smoking tomorrow. Thank the Boyfriend for buying me nicotine gum). I gave him my lighter, and then he started to sing to me. We chatted for a few minutes. He introduced himself. But other than the lighter he never asked me for any information that would make me uncomfortable. And I take it from his excellent singing voice that it is something he does often, not just to women who loan him a lighter.

Both of these guys respected my autonomy. The first took a no for an answer and didn’t look at me like I was a piece of meat in a super market. The second waited till I talked to him.

The guy in the elevator explicitly IGNORED Skepchick’s autonomy several times. He pretended like “oh, she didn’t mean me” when she was talking about misogyny and sexism in the atheist community and how uncomfortable it makes her when guys sexualize her when she’s just trying to talk about skepticism. He ignored her when she left the bar saying “I’m tired and I’m going to bed”. That’s twice. How many chances should he be given? Cause personally, you get exactly one chance with me. You ignore my autonomy once and there is NO earning my trust back. Once.

That’s the difference between creepy and non-creepy. Is the dude putting you in a position where you can’t walk away? Is he ignoring what you say and pushing what he wants? Is he demanding something from you, like that you smile when you’re just trying to walk to the bus stop or that you give him attention when you don’t have/don’t want to? Then he’s a creep. Full stop.

ETA- Cute story. Boyfriend, after our first lunch date, didn’t want to put me on the spot by asking for a second date in person, right there. So he texted me after I left to ask. That was super fucking classy. He gets mad props for it.