And as much as I love this here blog, it does keep me from looking for less fulfilling but more regularly paid work. So posting and responding may be a bit thinner than normal. There’s only so many years a girl can go without dental work and buying new undies and I’ve reached that limit (I probably reached that limit 2 years ago, but I’m a trooper).

I’m not going away, though. I just thought you all should know. And if any of you all have resume skills, I think I need them. I mean, I’ve been the person reading other people’s resumes for years and have helped people get jobs that way, but I am just at kind of a mental block when it comes to my own. Argh. I hate this part.

Also, if you want to do guest posting NOW IS THE TIME! Get something off your chest! Bitch here!

I’ve been calling myself and agnostic for years, which gave me a little pass on having to scrub my language clean of all the tiny religious references we make every single day. Think of the ubiquitous OMG! Or “Jesus Christ” said in response to something awful. Or the more happily uttered (moaned, occasionally screamed) “oh god!” pre and mid orgasm. And then there’s all the co-opted non-Christian (or non-monotheist) “Kharma’s a bitch” or talk about luck, or my general go to- “the universe has a sick sense of humor”. (No, it really fucking does. After years of owning queen size beds so that overnight guests wouldn’t be uncomfortable, I decided I only needed a full size bed in the new apartment because 1) My room is fucking tiny. 8′ by 11′ and the 11′ wall has the heater on it so it’s more like 9′. 2) I pretty much decided that I was just going to go back to my slutty ways and having a full size bed makes it easier to kick people out of it at 4am. Then whamo, the second person I go on a date with after coming out of hermitage turns out to be the kind of awesome person that I want to sleep over all the time.)

But the truth is, I’m an atheist. Bad things happen to people sometimes because they are just in the wrong place, and sometimes they happen because the human created systems we live under are rigged to fuck you up if you don’t belong to the elite. Things don’t happen for a (impossible to divine) reason. There is no divine plan, just us humans trying to find meaning in a world that can be hard sometimes.

But I still have all these leftover bits of language. What the fuck do I do with that? How do you explain the currently unexplainable without the use of religious phrasing? How do you retrain your brain to stop going for the immediate “OMG” and what do you use in it’s place? OMFSM (Oh my flying spaghetti monster) is cute but cumbersome and sometimes I don’t want to be cute. OMFSM does not work when a friend is telling you that their much loved dog has incurable cancer or that their birth control failed.

So my fellow atheists, what do we do with the leftovers (hangovers) of religious speech. Continuing to use them feels more than a bit like a sell-out to me. Every time the word “god” comes out of my mouth I feel dirty. But it’s a habit and I don’t know what to break it with.

Seriously, how rad are these guys? I once played a video of theirs on here that made crusty old Deek tear up.

I’ve had this discussion, more than once, with “progressive” types who are all “Oh I like all music but rap and country” which usually means they’ve got some unchecked class and race privilege they need to deal with, but also shows that (with some exceptions) the only time someone who is either non-white or non-middling middle class can get played on the radio is if they are following the dominant kyriarchial paradigm. Rap that is violent and misogynist, country that is ignorant (and violent and misogynist) is what gets mass promotion because it doesn’t challenge the status quo. (See my recent post about Odd Future, for example)

This does challenge that shit. He’s not rapping about bitches and hoes. He’s not talking about how tough he is or how violent he can be. He’s just telling us about life when you’re poor and non-white and riding the bus with a whole fuck ton of politics thrown in. (And it’s a wee bit dated, it ain’t 6 quarters anymore. It’s 10)

FTR, the 48 is my old bus route. Goes from way down in the brown Columbia City, past the U District to lily white Greenlake. I lived in the brown half of the route.

Who sent me a box o’ awesome from Paris including:

A ginormous movie poster of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. I actually have a bit of a thing for movie posters from foreign places and used to have some very cool Italian posters for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. How E picked up on this, I have no idea. But James Dean is now occupying one full wall in my bedroom. Thankfully Boyfriend is not the jealous type.

A cloth map of Paris. I haven’t figured out where to put it yet, but I can point to where I stayed in the 13th on the map. (Near the Guy Moquet metro station!)

Shopping bags, including one covered in pictures of fromage. It’s fromage Grommit! Already put to use, btw.

A couple of French feminism pins that now live on the flap of my Guatemalan Hupjil purse. I’m so international it hurts, baby.

And a copy of the French feminism mag Causette which my language skills are not good enough to translate so I am reading bits online. Must read the article about the Hollywood of Nigeria next.

I am easily bribed, by the way. Send me presents and I write more. And gush profusely about your awesomeness.

Via The Other Elizabeth- the best damn response to the Tracy Morgan homophobia-fest you’ll read.

Public banking- we’ve got a model for success. (Actually I have thought for a long damn time that credit for some things, like homes, should be universal. A well regulated public banking system is a damn good start though).

Davidly on how we respond to tyranny.

What does it mean that Poland and the Czech Republic outrank us when it comes to fundamental rights? (Full report is linked at the bottom)

War! In Libya! Not actually for humanitarian reasons! You don’t say. Well knock me over with a feather because I would never have suspected President Anti-War to go killing people for commercial reasons.

“Walking out into this world everyday is very horrific and strange” Yep.

Cultural hegemony, it’s a big scary sounding term, right? If you break it down by word definitions it’s the dominance of one section over all of the shared values of a society. That still sounds wordy. Lemme sum up.

Cultural hegemony, in the simplest of terms, is the idea that the best interests of the elite become the basis for “common sense”.

Examples:
Ladies who drink in bars are setting themselves up for rape. It’s common sense that we should be careful to not drink near people. Except that the only thing that turns a drunk girl (or a sober one) into a rape victim is the presence of a rapist. So “common sense” in this case just serves to keep rape culture thriving by shifting the blame onto the victim and ignoring the (mostly) elite men who commit the crime.

It’s also “common sense” that you are better able to determine how to spend your dollars individually than the government is, and therefore taxes are bad. Except most of us can’t afford to buy a road, or have the equipment and education to check our food for ecoli and salmonella. We understand that bulk buying is a good thing (do you have a costco card? Then you understand the value of bulk buying) but “common sense” tells us that the same economic principles don’t work when applied to the government. Can’t imagine why the elites would be in favor of lower taxes? Can you?

So voting. We’ve all heard the schtick, from elementary school on, about how our little votes make a difference. It’s “common sense” to vote and be counted, have your voice heard, right? Can’t complain if you didn’t vote (though complaining even if you did vote doesn’t get you anywhere either).

But over and fucking over we end up with a government that ignores what the people want, even though we keep voting. Polls have been done for literally decades putting things like jobs, healthcare, education at the top of the list of things voters are concerned about while pols keep talking about MOAR WAR and deficits.
And it’s not just recently. How fucking long were we in Vietnam?

So what happens when we stop voting? What kind of legitimacy do you think a government could claim if only 20% of the population votes and barely more than half of that 20% votes for the ruling party? None, close to none? Can you rule with the approval of just 11% of the populace? I don’t think so (and wouldn’t it be cool if there was a mathy type out there who wanted to figure out at just what voting level does a government lose legitimacy?)But don’t take my blathering hypotheticals as proof, just think about any totalitarian state where voting is mandatory and not voting is punishable. Voting, even when there is NO CHOICE TO MAKE provides a veneer of legitimacy.

And it is the veneer of legitimacy that the elites want. It’s in their best interest that we think we have a say in who has power, that we think “being counted” means something. It doesn’t, not now. It could, but we are a long damn way from a time when voting means anything other than rubber stamping our own demise.

But decide for yourselves whether you are ready to give up on “common sense” by not voting at all, or maybe test the waters with voting third party (that’s what I did, and may still do. But you can be damn sure that neither ruling party will ever get my vote again). “But do try”, as my favorite prof used to say, “to use a little more Cartesian common sense and think for yourselves” rather than following along with the what the elites think we should be doing. Being counted is for cattle. Being heard is for humans.

I need to have a gushy moment. My darling friends have been tittering about how I have a capital B-oyfriend. “Lizzie never uses that word. Teeheeheee”.

Peeps, I gotta tell you, I am a smitten kitten. And yes, Charlotte Lucas would say that all relationships tend towards vexation eventually (terribly paraphrased, btw). But there is a whole lot of basic feminism 101 stuff I don’t have to explain, argue, or even just hash out with him. Do you know how often that has happened in my excessively long dating history? Never. He’s sweet and thoughtful and kind and worries about me and sticks up for me. We make a pretty damn good team (though both of us share superhero level powers of cutting through bureaucratic red tape).

Why, oh why, might people, even after being bombarded with shit like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s (steal money from the food stamp program) Move” campaign and, I dunno, every single form of media beating us over the head about how we don’t eat enough fruits and veggies or exercise enough, why might people be eating fewer veggies and doing less exercise?

Perhaps declining standards of living, disemployment, skyrocketing food costs all combine to make it harder for people to do things like eat salads and join a fucking gym.

Health, healthy foods, safe and affordable places to exercise (for those physically able to do so) are all social justice issues. Just like telling women to be less bitchy, but not too timid, doesn’t actually close the wage gap, telling poor people to eat more fruits and vegetables doesn’t actually make them affordable.

So how about if the shitheads responsible for the new food non-pyramid and all those craptastic PSAs shut the fuck up and use the money to give folks the ability to actually buy healthy groceries or pay for an exercise activity. Not only would people eat better and be healthier, but since every dollar spent on food stamps actually puts a buck sixty-something back into the economy imagine the bump that small businesses would get if people could use a voucher to take a pilates or karate class?

But what the fuck do I know? I’m just your average poor person. The government’s only interest in me is using me as an example of what not to do to scare all the rest of y’all into behaving.

After I got my ultrasound back, I made a panicked (couple of) call(s) to my awesome doctor’s medical assistant. After reviewing the results, Awesome Doc asked MA to pass on that “No, (my fucked up) uterus would not make getting an IUD difficult, but here’s a couple of valium (because I was obviously freaked out about the whole thing)”.


Cut to Friday afternoon. Valium taken, legs in stirrups, scary pokey medical instruments jacking open my bits like they need a flat tire changed. And the doctor says “huhmm, there’s just no obvious path in there”. 


So my kinky uterus is, in fact, an impediment to getting an IUD. All hope is not lost, however. Next month I get to take a dose of misoprostol, one of the drugs used for medical abortions, the night before my appointment to open up my bits. Fun huh?