Ok, so i’m apparently the last person on the internets to hear about lolcats.

Well, they’re still funny.

Here’s another site

Of course, I had to make some of my own! Courtesy of the Wonder family’s waay tooo many cats, which make me lol on a daily basis

I know, as far as blog post go I have been lax, lax lax.

And until Fall Quarter starts in late September, you can bet your sweet ass that posting will continue to be lax. I am doing a full time temp gig that will take me right up to the first day of classes if all goes well. I am soooooo happy for the money (I make more temping in 2 days than I make in an entire week working as the unappreciated wal-mart style employee of a public community college) but it is a lifesucking, mind numbing, drain on my creative facilities to have to dress in grown-up clothes and shoes (ouch) everyday and be “professional”.

Don’t get me wrong, the people that I am temping with are awesome and had me laughing till tears came out the other day. I had to pull a Tammy Faye check and make sure my very grown-up mascara wasn’t making a run for the border. I have a fish who lives on my desk that I sing to (any Red Dwarf fans would recognize the “I’m gonna getcha little fishy” song as Cat’s favorite way to start a meal) but I do not have enough time to read, and without input my brain can’t spit out any of the witty commentary that the few people who read this blog have come to expect. (For those of you searching for Nancy Pelosi’s hot breasts or Miss Indiana Wet Panties, you probably weren’t going to find what you were looking for anyways).

I will do my best to post occasionally, but much like the relative who has sworn to turn over a new leaf after his 3rd stint in rehab and 4th DUI, don’t expect much.

In the mean time, the Monkey, aka the Kid, has returned from his sojourn in the South and has brought me presents of chocolate covered cherries and Memphis style barbque sauce. We be making ribs tonight! I know he was only gone 3 weeks, but I think he got taller. He now wears a larger shoe size than me and is only a few (4 max- 2 or 3 more likely) inches shorter than his dear mom. Oh noes! Soon he’ll be too tall for me to noogie him in a futile attempt to create a bald spot (between my mountains of hair and his dad’s shaggy, shaggy mane, the Kid could be science’s best shot at curing male pattern baldness).

Contemplate that until I can return to my regularly scheduled program of harassing students and reading every damn thing that has ever been posted to the internets.

I had the sense not long after he moved in that he was angling to replace the Ex… dropping “not-quite-hints”… asking questions like “did he ever cook dinner for you(as he was cooking dinner) or did he ever take me dancing, and saying he needed to find a woman who “appreciated his attributes”

• and I of course told myself things like I was “overreacting,” and why would i think he would be interested, and so what if he had a crush on me, was that so bad?

he does the icky look-up thing. and, yes, the REALLY OFFENSIVE THING about the look-up is that sense that you’re not entitled to be offended, because he’s “just looking”

• and it makes us uncomfortable because it’s meant to make us uncomfortable

he was doing work for our friend, who he wasn’t supposed to be charging, and then extorted money from her by leaving a big hole in her roof, and expected her not to tell us…. after she rebuffed his attempt to lean in for “a little kiss between friends”

Every now and then some giant asshat will come along and decided to post some vicious, violent, misogynistic comment on an old post. I think that it is good to bring the asshats into the light and show the world how incredibly awful they are.

The other day- anonymous asshat decide to post 3 incoherent, ignorant, and disgusting comments on three old posts.

First, on a funny little thing about what I’ve learned from reading online dating profiles asshat replies

Earle,

I find that fat, ugly women are often as predatory about sex as men. Could it be that once women stop getting laid that they don’t accept it any more than the men do?

Doesn’t judging men on your perception of their sexual prowess encourage the very “conquest mentality” you supposedly don’t want us to have?

Now ask why, in 2007, you want to learn about players, pickup artists, and NLP seduction, when this stuff has been on the net since 1996 and before? Are you a mindless sheep who needs the media to tell her what to read?

I don’t know who Earle is. I don’t mention men’s sexual prowess anywhere in the post. I don’t think he has any sort of reading comprehension because he mentions stuff from Scarred’s PUA site. Do you think he realizes that there is more than one feminst blogger out there- or does he think that by commenting here for some other site that the feminist bat signal will go out and we’ll all come running on our fat, hairy, man-hating legs?

Next, from a post on the icky look-up thing that gross guys do

Earle,

Another way women are treated as objects instead of people is to get hired for jobs because they look pretty.

Is it safe to say that women don’t fight this because the price is right?

Do ugly and fat women count? They get hurt too.

Again- who is this Earle? Does Earl have magic, invisible powers of commenting that I cannot see? How does women getting hired for their looks have anything to do with guys blocking me from walking or whatever so they can take a mental jack-off pic? Does he hate fat and ugly women or does he want them to count too? If there was ever proof that the patriarchy hurts men too, I would say that asshat shows it. He clearly never developed critical thinking skills or the ability to communicate intelligently.

But that is nothing compared to asshat’s last comment. See, I wrote a little thing on What men can do to stop rape. We women have been trying to stop rape since, oh before recorded history. Asshat thinks that men not raping women would interfere with men’s job prospects. I never knew that rape could be a great networking exercise.

Yeah, men are supposed to cut off their access to other men, jobs, friends, etc. to “do the right thing.”

Then, the men are supposed to watch women reject them due to their lower social and economic standing, and run to the rapists because they’re life’s “winners.”

Do you really think any jock is going to be annoyed by anything that repels old, ugly feminists and attracts athletic, young, very attractive women?

What.The.Fuck? Women “run to the rapists because they are life’s ‘winners’? Seriously asshat, put down the bong, stop using Grand Theft Auto as the basis for all your social commentary, and work on developing the muscle between your ears instead of the muscles in your right hand.

If this is an example of the kind of outstanding male jock specimens that the patriarchy is offering up- how do we continue to have a birthrate at all. Even this guy’s mother must regret her decision to “choose life” in this case. I know that just reading his comments made my ovaries shrivel up in fear.

(On a much more positive note, I just got home from a fab date with a liberal boy who has the most fantastic pecs and is a hell of a kisser. The pecs, OMG, I wanted to rip his shirt off right there in parking lot. And the kissing, I’m a damn fine kisser (have been told by more than a few people that I am the best;) and this boy, well, he might put me to shame in the best possible way)

I started a new temp job this week which will hopefully take me right up to the day that school starts in late September. I am sooooooo happy for the money (OMG! I make as much in 2 days as I normally make in a whole week!) But my internet time is drastically reduced. No blog readin’, writtin’ or commentin’ during most of the week.

Anyways, I wanted to write about Scooter Libby and the thwarted UK bombings. These things may not seem related, but they are. Let’s connect the dots, shall we…….

Stopping terrorist acts is a job best left to police and intelligence agents- not military intervention. This is true for the current situation in Scotland. Was true when Al Q

I feel as much enthusiasm for the 4th of July as I feel for Mother’s day. If I had my wish, I would spend every Independence day in another country, but alas, my financial situation leaves me here today.

July 4th is a day where people who spend the rest of the year not doing a damn thing to improve our country whip out flags and declare their American exceptionalism for all the world to see. It’s embarrassing and misleading. It’s a groundswell of sentimentality and false pride. It’s a day when I see the worst of American attitudes shot through the air like the firecrackers that will blast tonight.

Patriotism is not a flag decal on your car, or a barbeque with your friends. It is not a well-timed fireworks display set to pro-American music. It is not supporting a criminal who happens to be your president no matter what. It is not ignoring the lowest of our citizenry, those who have the American dream but no way to access it, or spewing hate about those who are not citizens but want to be. But that’s what we celebrate as patriotism today.

Real patriotism, the kind that Jefferson, my favorite of the founding fathers, knew about means struggle. It means holding your government accountable. It means striving for those inalienable rights that all men people are endowed with, regardless of what their citizenship is.

Patriotism means supporting our troops by bringing them home. I had this discussion with a marine a few weeks ago. He gave the standard line about how his job is to fight to the death to defend my rights to freedom. I told him that since our troops job is to fight the wars we send them on without question, it is my duty to make sure that those wars are only fought for a justifiable and unavoidable reason.

We, the people of the United States, have a duty to make sure that any wars fought on our behalf are just. We have the responsibility of ensuring that the leaders who declare war, who send troops into harms way are doing it for the right reason with a solid plan. That is the pact we have with every single soldier. We know that they will risk their lives for us without question, so we need to ask the questions for them.

We like to think about the things that our country gives us, like freedom of speech or the right to bear arms. We rarely think about what our obligations as part of this country are. We may think they are limited to things like voting or paying taxes. The least of us can do those things, but we are supposed to do more than that. I don’t think a fireworks display fulfills those obligations.

I love the idea of this country. I love the potential our country has for greatness. I believe with every idealistic inch of my soul that we can create a society based on fairness and equality and I am willing to do the hard work to get there. That is patriotism. What we have instead is nationalism masquerading as patriotism, blind obedience to authority, big showy displays of national feeling, and unquestioning belief that America is great without opening our eyes to the very not great reality around us.

I spent last night at the Comet, a place where I always end up making out with inappropriate boys and talking porn (last night was no exception- hi Andy, hi F., hi Swedish guy whose name I never caught).

Last night, in addition to the make out sessions, I enjoyed something completely out of character for me- a hard thrashing hair metal band called Skeletor. I knew it was going to be good when the lead singer, dressed in tight black jeans and a leather & fleece viking vest, pulled out a sword and held it over his head in triumphant excaliber style. Upon seeing the sword, someone joked about it being a Lord of the Rings

Via Pandagon is a story about a girl who got a serious infection in her naughty bits because of waxing and shaving, not once but twice! (Click through links at Pandagon to see the most horrific picture- not for the faint hearted.)

She presented to the ER with not only “grossly swollen” external genitalia, and pain so extreme that she had to be put under general anesthetic just so her physician could perform a gynecologic exam. She was so swollen that, according to the legend to Figure 1 (which you can find online, as the article is freely available), “she was unable to pass urine, and the vaginal space was obliterated by edema.”

Whenever removal of body hair (or most beauty rituals performed by women for that matter) comes up in feminist discussion, there is always a good portion that involves women explaining that they conform to those standards but only because it is their choice, not because they want to live up to the patriarchal ideal. Maybe that’s true, but I doubt it. We are all victims of the patriarchy and even the most strident of us feminists have issues that aren’t quite resolved.

For example, I shave the legs and pits. I will tell people that I do it because I love how my legs feel right after I shave them, and that is true. But if that was the whole truth, then I wouldn’t have a problem wearing skirts when I haven’t shaved them. I wear skirts almost everyday, but not if there is stubble on my legs. That has nothing to do with how it feels to me physically, but it is because the ideal has been ingrained into my brain and I haven’t been able to break that bit of social programming.

As for shaving the girly bits, about once a year or so I forget how much pain it causes me and I go bald. It feels really nice for about 12 hours, and then I remember why it is that I don’t do this. For weeks after there is itchy regrowth, ingrown hairs that become infected, and without it’s protective covering, the bits become prone to yeast infections (I know- oversharing, deal with it). The women I know who do this all the time don’t deny these problems, but they see it as a “cleanliness” issue. For some reason it has gotten into people’s heads that pubic hair= dirty, smelly pussy. I wonder if these people have ever heard of water and it’s magic cleansing powers. They also claim that you get used to it after a while. but I’ve been shaving my legs since I was 12 and they still get itchy with ingrown hairs. How long would I have to endure the much worse discomfort of shaving the bits? 20 years of shaving the legs hasn’t made me used to it.

And that brings us to circumcision (on males, that is).

The guys in my family aren’t circumcised, and that includes my son. Maybe because of my paternal grandmother’s Eastern European heritage they missed the whole 1950’s push towards circumcision as a hygiene practice. But they aren’t. And when the Kid was born 12 years ago, and still sometimes today, I get no end of grief about how wrong I was not to circumcise him. Here’s an example of a conversation I once had with a guy about this:

Guy: That is so wrong.

Me: Why? We’re not Jewish. Why should I have had him snipped?

Guy: Because it’s dirty. Think of all the crud that gets stuck in there.

Me: Oh my god, your totally right! Think of all the crud that gets stuck under your fingernails. You should cut off your hands instead of, you know, grabbing some soap and water!

This is how nearly every argument I’ve had with people over the circumcision thing has gone. This whole conversation could apply to waxing the bits for hygiene purposes too (though for washing girly bits, if you must use soap it should a be mild, glycerin- free version. Consider that your sex parts tip for the day).

The girl in the original story, the one whose “vaginal space was obliterated”, after the first infection could not possibly have been doing it because it felt good. She was willing to risk her life a second time for a pornified ideal. Not just discomfort, but toxic shock, possibly lethal. We might not all have reactions that bad, and none of us are completely free from behaviors that are socially programmed and we all have to examine those behaviors to at least understand why we have those behaviors and decide if it might be healthier to change them.

(note: I know there are studies that say circumcision may lower the transmission rates of HIV in males. But so do condoms. I think I’ll teach the Kid about safe sex practices and if he decides he wants to get circumcised as an adult to lower his HIV risk- I’ll smack him on the head once with a box of trogans and then let him do what he wants. )

From the story I wrote about here