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.

So first day of new job out of the way. It was only a half day, but I didn’t sleep well last night so I feel like I worked 100 hours.

I was feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome, that feeling like “OMG, I don’t deserve this. It’s too easy. I got the job too easy! What if they find out I am just a big turd!” Then I got there this morning and filled out 8000 pages of stuff and started training and felt much better. I’m now at the “I got this. I can do this” phase.

Yay.

Also, when I first moved to Seattle a thousand years ago, I worked in Pioneer Square. I think it’s the oldest neighborhood in the city. I loved it. It’s beautiful, to begin with. But I also like being around all the strange people you meet down there. I got there early this morning and sat on a park bench for a bit before going in. While sitting there, I got a not creepy marriage proposal (I don’t know if I can explain the difference between a creepy street harasser and a guy who is just being cute but who you/I am not interested in. But there is one.) And then I got serenaded by another guy, also in a non-creepy way (he pinged my gaydar,so I think he was also just being cute).

All in all, a pretty damn good first day. Now I need a nap. And some dinner. And a nap.

Agenda setting, the oh-so-important task left to the elites is where they decide what the issues are and how they are going to frame them. Agenda setting is not, in itself, a bad thing. If you have a responsive government, then the agenda should line up pretty closely with the needs and wants of the people. But if, for instance, the King of France has decided that the agenda is going to be getting gold plated window latches at Versailles instead of making sure the peasants can eat, then you’ve got a problem.

One of the basic pieces of American democracy is supposed to be freedom of the press. While, yes, getting to say the truth is important, freedom of the press is supposed to keep government responsive to the needs of the people by reporting what the needs are.

But when all media is owned by a handful of elites with only their pockets in mind, we have lost that crucial bit of society that keeps government responsive.

And Lambert has a handy little chart to show just how unresponsive the elite media is to our needs and wants.

Thankfully, social media can tell us where the elite media is failing us. Does anyone seriously read or watch the domestic news for actual news anymore? I’m down to reading McClatchy and The NYT (and I only read THE NYT to get pissed off at what they aren’t covering).

So now that the overwhelming joy has settled a wee bit and practical matters are rearing their hydra-like heads

Guess who is, for the first time since President Mondo-Fucko took office(that would be Bush 2) going to be a full-time, permanent employee with medical, vision and DENTAL?

I can’t stop shaking. OMG. OMG. OMG. So freaking awesome. OMG.