I hate cauliflower. I mean I really hate cauliflower. I like most other veggies. Spinach, broccoli, asparagus, even brussell sprouts when cooked right. But I cannot imagine any scenario where I see cauliflower as anything other than an ugly blight on the vegetable world.

But other people like it. I can’t imagine why they do, but it happens. It happens often enough that it is always for sale at my grocery store. Always. And yet I keep shopping at that store. I don’t boycott the store. I haven’t written to my congressman asking him to pass a resolution that cauliflower is the root (or veg) of all evil. I simply refrain from buying or eating cauliflower myself. And I can still sneer at cauliflower eaters and snarkily ask them why they would put such and ugly, nasty thing in their mouths.

Human rights work the same way. I don’t like most of the Christian religion. I won’t go to their churches or share their beliefs. But I also am not writing my congressman to tell him that Christianity is the root of all evil and should be outlawed. But I still raise an eyebrow at the fundies and make fun of their belief in the magical sky fairy.

So when the fundies, of whatever religious flavor – Christian, Mormon, Muslim, whatever, pull out their “You’re mere existence steps on my rights” crap. I want to tie them down and force feed them cauliflower. They are wrong.

That gay people exist and should have the same human rights to marry and be parents is not infringing on anyones rights to believe that gays are the root of all evil. You can believe that till until the magical sky fairy returns for all I care. But you don’t get to legislate their rights away. Just like I, as a reasonable human being in the world, will not legislate the cauliflower away. Gays exist, cauliflowers exist, women who want control of their own bodies exist. And their right to exist trumps your desire to not feel uncomfortable.

No one will ever force a fundy to have hot gay sex. Or prevent a hetero couple from marrying because a smoking lesbian wants the bride. But on a daily basis, gay couples are kept from marrying the people they love and kept from providing stable homes to foster kids while fundies scream cause it makes them feel icky inside to imagine the “wrong” body parts lining up in a dark bedroom somewhere.

Inspired by this clip from 30 days posted at Jezebel (Sorry OD, it’s a habit i’m trying to break) that I can’t find an embeddable link for.

Hi All!

First, work on the book is going, but slowly. I have so much of it in my head and wish I could just drill a hole behind my ear and pour all this stuff out onto paper. But alas, we are not that high tech yet. Many thanks to Soopermouse and Ruthzilla who are letting me steal some of their teenage stories to fill in the pages. You two rock the casbah.

Now a few things I want to bitch about:

Katherine Heigl took herself out of the running for an Emmy this year because what the writers gave her to work with was crap. It’s true, they totally dumbed her down. They turned a previously interesting character into a mushy, insecure doormat. She finally has enough power to do something about it, and she did. Yay for her. I didn’t hear so much hating when George Clooney felt the same way about ER. But Katherine’s a girl, so naturally she should just shut up and be grateful that anyone would write her anything.

Teenage pregnancy pacts- totally fiction. I could have told you that one. Hey skeevy principal, if you feel the need to lie and smear young girls so as to keep your job then you are in the wrong line of work. You should try working for the Obama campaign or the media. Both are experts at smearing women for personal gain.

Consider this an open bitchfest. Something bugging you. Need to rant, to rave. Leave it in comments. Come on, you know you wanna.

You taught my about NIMBY when I was just a wee kid sneaking peaks at you on HBO. But this is probably why I love you the best.

Paula Abeles, Clinton supporter turned McCain endorser has had the Obot treatment. The Obots, unhappy that she just won’t drink the fucking koolaid, published her private contact info and now she and her family are receiving death threats.

Nice. Way to stay classy Obama. Your bots are starting to remind me of the Hitler youth.

Kid:we are at an impass-ay

Me: it’s impasse. Passe means something else

Kid: what?

Me: It means you are behind the times. Like so 5 minutes ago. Au currant means you are totally right now.

Kid: so what if I am totally furturistic

Me: Oh they have people who are paid to imagine what the future is like, they are called futurists

Kid: Do they need to study a lot of psychology.

Me: I think so.

Kid: That’s what I want to be then- a futurist forensic anthropologist

ME: So you want to figure out how people want to die in the future.

Kid: yes, that is exactly right.

Me: Dude, you’re weird.

From Vastleft comes a list of Pro BO comments in Florida, you know those half people in the southern most reaches of the country.

I’m just gonna quote one here. I think it sums up the cult of Obama pretty succinctly.

Bolds mine, natch

Listen pall….take your shit somewhere else…no one wants to hear it on this site…..go stand on your soapbox with McCain supporters..nothing you say means anything to me…Obama could murder somebody at this point and I would still vote for him…..in other words…go f*@& yourself!!!

Meet the new Dems. Aren’t you proud of what our party has become?

A response to a friend who thinks I shouldn’t take his Hillary hate personally:

If I supported a candidate who thought that death threats against you were okay, or that had no problem addressing black members of the press as son, or boy- you might understand that it is fucking personal. Misogyny hurts every woman, not just the one it’s directed at. I hate Obama with a fiery fucking passion, but I still stand up to people that make fucking monkey sock puppet Obama dolls cause I know it hurts more than just Obama. It hurts people I care about.

If I told you to get over it when people publish pictures of Michelle Obama being lynched- would you take it personally? What if someone called Obama a dumb n*gger? Would you take it personally? What if thousands of Hillary supporters started trolling blogs run by people of color and saying things like “shine my shoes you fucking jungle monkey” Would you take it personally?

It is fucking personal. The democratic party wants the women to shut up and get back in the voting booth, despite the black eyes and broken ribs we’ve gotten from our party. It is fucking personal.

So you coming back like this, full of the same lines, hurts me.

The problem with Democratic compromises is that they are over things that should never be bargained away, such as privacy, a social safety net, transparent government responsive to the citizenry, and other fundamental principles of liberal democracy.

Compromises are for making choices between acceptable outcomes, but where one may be more to the liking of one party than the other choices. Our rights, such as freedom from unlawful search and seizure, are not on the table.

Word!

And today I did not work at one of them.

I paid for my teenage fashion habit (and some of my family’s living expenses) by cleaning timeshares on the weekends and during the summer. Eventually I worked up to cleaning private houses. While my friends spent their days at the beach, I scrubbed toilets. But I had way better shoes than they all did.

When the Kid was still in preschool, I worked as an admin 40 or 50 hours during the week and went back to cleaning houses on the weekend. I have no idea how I got through those years without breaking. I never had time for anything fun that didn’t involve being covered in child detritus and unknown sticky food substances.

For a while, I cleaned my brother’s house every week. That was actually all right.Of course he didn’t know that it took me less time than he thought it did to clean his house,especially when i was cleaning it weekly. But I also did all his laundry for him while I was there, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. I made 75 bucks for 3 hours of work. Not bad.

But today I promised to help out a friend cleaning one of the houses he rents out. I was just to clean the stove and the bathroom fan. It was supposed to be an easy hours worth of work for $20. The bathroom fan took 15 minutes and a screwdriver to clean all the gook off of it. Not a big deal. But my hands still ache from the hours I spent on the stove. I was there for 3 hours. I still only made 20 bucks, I told him that’s what the job would cost and I stuck to it. That is less than minimum wage in WA state. I don’t think the thing had been cleaned since it’s original installation many many years ago.

I am lucky. Cleaning houses is something I do as an extra. It is not my only job skill. So normally I can negotiate my rate and walk away if the pay is too little or the job is too hard. I am also a citizen. So I don’t have the fear of deportation should I complain. Struggling home exhausted on the bus today after working and I thought about all those women who do the same thing I did today everyday. Coming home so tired i can barely see straight, I think about those women with little kids who will have to come home and cook dinner and give baths and read stories still. I, thankfully, have a child old enough that i can ask him to throw something into the oven and who longer needs (or wants) a mom to make sure he washed behind his ears or tuck him in.

Once. long ago when the Kid was still tiny and I worked all those hours both during the week and on the weekend, back when AOL was the online community of non-geeky types, I got into a discussion with someone who condescendingly told me to stuff it about the class warfare stuff. They told me the trick was to work smarter, not harder. Today I’d like to kick that dude in the nutsack. Work this hard should be paid like construction work or any other job where you spend your time breaking your body with hard labor and toxic chemicals. The fact that mostly women do it (and do it for free in their own homes) is why the pays sucks. Though we would never expect a dude who can fix his own plumbing to be content with minimum wage or less.

Trailer for Water

A few years ago I saw and fell in love with Deepa Mehta’s movie Water. She tells the most beautiful, tragic stories that show in a very clear way just how political the personal is. Water is about widows in 1930’s India, how they are cast off from their families after their husbands die, even if they are jut 8 years old, to live hidden away so as not to bring bad luck on respectable married ladies.

Earth Clip

Last night I watched Earth, about the city of Lahore as India gains it’s independence and loses Pakistan. What little I know of India’s history is from the 1800’s Delhi riots. So I never knew what it was that caused Muslims and Hindus, who had lived together for centuries in peace, to suddenly hate each other with a fiery passion.
It is another beautiful, tragic film.

Of course I would be a complete fraud if I didn’t mention that I have a weird adoration for cute Indian boys. And I have dated Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs from the subcontinent (it never works out, they may be the most beautiful boys on the planet, but the boy worship of their cultures makes the cultural divide near impossible to conquer.)But Mehta never fails to put in lots of eye candy in her movies.

Fire Trailer

Next on my list of Mehta films to see is Fire. This movie pissed off people so bad they burnt down theaters. When Water was filming, the location had to be changed at the last minute because protesters burned the set down. It takes some kind of courage for Mehta to keep making these movies. And every ounce of is shows in her films.