but a severe case of malaise, or ennui, or I don’t know what.
I’m not in the mood to keep writing about the thousand ways the world is awful.
Instead I give you the Last Puppet Bender. OD should be amused.
Innapropriate conversations wth children
Since we have just got internet access today the Kid is chomping at the bit for me to hurry up and give him some internet time. Having just spent several days watching newsbunnies scream on tv, this is what I said to him
Me: Dude, some conservative douche said that porn makes you gay, all porn, especially teenage boys. And since we all know that the internet is for porn, I can’t let you on it or you’ll be gay.
Kid: You wouldn’t care if I was gay.
Me: No I really wouldn’t. But conservatives think that having a gay son is the worst thing ever. So no internet for you.
Thank you conservatives, for giving me a reason to hog the precious precious internet access.
I think about food a lot too
Anglachel has been writing again. She thinks about food a lot. Us poor folks, and those who grew up poor, think about food a lot.
It can become almost an obsessive thought. When we are broke, like we have been this summer, I think about fruit. I’ve had exactly one nectarine, my favorite fruit, all summer. When money is tight, fruit is the first thing to go from the shopping list. It’s a snack, it doesn’t have enough calories to count as a meal. We should be eating5 fruits a day. We can’t afford to eat 5 fruits a week.
I think about the virtuous foodies, people with the luxury of buying all organic, or who have the money to live on a raw food diet and still get enough calories that they don’t spend all day in the hunger fog.I think about the Kid’s wheat allergies, and I feel mountains of guilt because I can’t afford to be as careful about gluten free products as I should be. Frozen pizzas are cheap, sandwiches are cheap. Make them gluten free however, and a 2 dollar pizza is now 8 bucks and half the size. I think how nice it would be to load up a pantry full of rice noodles and gluten free bread and all manner of fresh fruit so that the bottomless pit of teenage hunger known as the Kid doesn’t have to feel bad about what he’s putting in his mouth. I know that for him, every bite of whole wheat bread will shorten his life as surely as if I handed him a pack of smokes and told him to light up.But I have to feed him something now.
I think about how food stamps don’t actually help us be healthy, just less hungry. The allotment is supposed to be for an emergency diet, just enough to get you through. All us poor people live on food stamp rations, like people in WWII, with the best and healthiest food going to those more virtuous than us, those with money. I think about how those virtuous foodies look down on those of us who can’t afford organic milk for our kids, like we are some kind of child abusers because quieting rumbling bellies is a more urgent need than tracking the provenance of our produce.
I dream about out of reach foods, bloody red rib eyes, giant salads with fancy cheese, the perfect black berries, grape tomatoes so ripe you can eat them like candy. I wish that the Kid didn’t worry so much about food. He has the poor kid habit of scarfing as much as he can of whatever he can in secret, like being hungry is a shameful flaw instead of a biological fact.
But I even if I tell him to slow down, not to worry so much, that it will be okay, I know that he know the truth. Having enough to eat is not a given, not even in this country of overabundance. A full fridge is as much of a fantasy to me as owning a private jet.
Let’s All Say Hurray
And give a big round of applause to Gidget Commando for doing a helluva fill in job!
Kid and I made it, whoopee. We are still without regular internet access, though I have hijacked a laptop and wifi access at the moment. Until we get this resolved (I don’t know when) I’ll keep checking in as often as I can. But we are ok. Very ok. I knew that the mountains of stress I had been under was taking a physical toll (details are a wee bit tmi, even for me) but within 36 hours of landing I am back on the right path, if not 100 percent yet.
I’m getting ready to homeschool the Kid and just had a little meeting with a math tutor so I can figure out where to start him. I had a pretty good idea, but damn his old school fucked him over on the math teaching. He spent the last 2 years being an unpaid tutor and not learning much of anything. It makes me steam out the ears, the amount of wasted time and energy. But I think it will work out.
Having family around is awesome and weird. I am so used to it being just me and the Kid and quiet. But now there’s 7 to 9 of us around at any given time. It’s loud and crazy and there has been lots of hugs and tears. But good.
And hot. OMG people. I am a northern city girl in a tropical farm town. I love sweaters and knee high boots and trench coats in shades of black and grey. And none of that is wearable here. I may have to become one of those people that wears capri pants in sherbert colors. Stop me before I lose my gritty edge!
Much love to all of you that helped me get here, and sent good wishes. You kick ass.
Smooches!
A few Floridians want to make THE PILL unconstitutional?
From Tampa Bay Online: Anti-abortion conservatives are proposing a new constitutional amendment that critics claim would make it a crime to take birth control pills in Florida.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/10/110946/would-proposed-amendment-make-birth-control-illega/
Sheesh. I think these folks really need a new hobby. Bowling? I hear bowling’s fun. Knitting’s made quite the comeback. Hmmm….maybe taking care of all the unwanted children now in foster care? Ding-ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!
The good news (if any) is that they need over 676,000 petition signatures by February 1 to put it on next year’s ballot. Now we’ve had our fair share of anti-choice trolls here, but when you get down to brass tacks, even plenty of peeps who hate legalized abortion draw the line at getting rid of birth control. An awful lot of people who don’t like to talk about, well, you know, down there, still use active efforts to try to prevent unwanted pregnancy. I can’t see this effort getting anywhere. Can you? Or am Ijust uncharacteristically optimistic today?
ID theft: ur doin it rong
Your funny for the day. This —http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/09/18/bad_grammar_trips_up_suspected_identity_thief/ — just cracked me up. (The identity thief’s bad grammar and spelling tripped him up.)
Boys and girls, it’s important to study hard in school. Otherwise, someday yor bad skilz may git you bustid.
One more woman dead. And MAYBE a ray of hope.
Good morning, all. Gidget Commando here, pitching an inning or two for the Red Queen while she’s on her journey. Please forgive my relative lack of formatting–it’s my first experience with Blogger, so I’m still terrified of mishandling things like, oh, hot links and such.
If you’ve seen or heard the news this morning, you know that police have arrested their “person of interest” in the slaying of Yale grad student Annie Le. The cops and prosecutors aren’t talking squat about motive yet. But why do I get the scary feeling that this was another case of a guy who wouldn’t take NO for an answer? Please, Flying Spaghetti Monster, I hope I’m wrong. I hope the guy had a pre-existing mental health condition, or a flashback, or ate bad shrooms and got violent. But anyone who’s had the feminist “click” is probably feeling what I’m feeling today: unease, and anger that yet one more female life is gone because some guy thought his wants were more important than her full agency and free will.
However, I did glimpse a glimmer of hope this morning…in, of all places, the mainstream corporate media. Good Morning America had the chairman of The Forensics Panel, Dr. Michael Welner, on to discuss the case. (If you go to http://abcnews.go.com/gma and scroll down to Yale Murder: Crime of Passion?, you’ll find the segment.) When host Chris Cuomo asked Dr. Welner if the murder were a ‘crime of passion,’ I nearly threw a shoe at the TV. Thankfully, Dr. Welner shot down that ‘crime of passion’ crap immediately. His was the first voice of reason I’ve heard talking about these kind of crimes since Gavin de Becker in The Gift of Fear (a book I recommend strongly). Give Dr. Welner some love and watch the clip.
I’m preparing to help a dear friend face down a jilted suitor who doesn’t want to take her multiple NOs for answers. He’s escalating. She’s just issued him a firmer NO. For her safety, and mine, I hope he gets it and isn’t inspired by what just happened at Yale. But if she has to face him, I’m going with her. Wish us safety and a good outcome.
Leaving on a jet plane
So my little blogfriends, in the interest of radical vulnerability, I got news.
After many many years of doing this whole single mom on her own thing- I’m tired. No, I have not found some dude to cozy up to. But I miss having a family, having other grown people to share burdens and triumphs with. After Ruth went to go stuff her brain with math in grad school, I really didn’t feel like I have that here anymore. And shit is too bad and too constant for me to get through this on my own.
I could stay in a lovely progressive city with a job that I love but that after 6 long years still doesn’t pay me enough to pay for both rent and food in the same month, or give me benefits, feeling stuck in a bottomless pit of crisis after crisis after crisis of poverty, and left to deal with the mechanics of crisis solving on my own when the world has worn me down so much that my phone ringing causes an anxiety attack.
Or I can go to a state I am not too fond of, a swing state with decidedly conservadouche leanings, where I can’t see myself living forever, in a tiny rural town away from what us city folks like to call “civilization”, but be surrounded by people I love and that love me too. And the Kid. We will still be broke as fuck, and now I will be without a job. But when the phone rings I won’t have to figure out the latest disaster alone. That means the world right now.
I am not sure how internet/ computers will work there. As you all know, my frankenputer is on it’s last legs and I am ripping out the hard drive and sending it off to the computer graveyard. I will be begging for time on someone else’s compy or maybe finding a library.
So we are on a plane. All our stuff has been packed up and stored.
I’ll write and let you all know how it’s going as soon as I can. And for those of you godless whores who have done so much to keep us afloat this summer, you have my undying gratitude. You peeps were the only thing that kept me going.
Hybrid economy for me please
I promised Dead Men that if I had time I would write about capitalism, and since Gidget Commando gave me the best damn quotable quote on capitalism since Marx, here’s your post. In other words- you demand, I supply.
I believe in hybrids. I believe that there are some things government should never be responsible for, and some things that business should never be responsible for. And I think there is a good way to figure out which one should be responsible for what. If the ultimate goal of profit is at odds with the welfare of society, then business should stay the fuck out of it. This is why military contracting is bad- it incentivizes war. Military contractors make money when we are at war, they have a vested interest in starting and perpetuating wars. Health insurance companies have a vested interest in supplying as little care as possible. This is how they make money. It is not a flaw, it is the system.
As for things government shouldn’t be involved with, I don’t want some dude in a cheap blue suit deciding what this year’s hot fashions will be, or what movies should get made, or which books will be published. Governments are notoriously bad at responding to market forces. Look at the current health care debate for an example. A huge percentage (I think it’s in the 70s) of people want a public option, but that’s not what we are going to get. The government is not responding to the demand.
Now here’s where the overlap is (and where Gidget Commando comes in.) Capitalism is, at it’s root, single minded, unconcerned, and amoral. It’s not evil. It’s not suddenly come down with some terrible disease. It always has and will always be looking for ways to cut costs either in labor or environmental concerns or product safety, because that is how it is designed.
Government’s job is to keep capitalism in check because as Gidget Commando says:
It’s like a perpetual adolescent. Capable of great energy, innovation, movement–but y’all really wouldn’t want to leave it to its own unchaperoned devices, lest it throw a kegger and destroy the entire house.
Capitalism will skip class, get high, shoplift lipstick, and forget to use condoms. Government is there to be the parent with restrictions that keep capitalism from reckless driving into a bus full of us regular folks. Even Adam Smith knew this (but you’d be hard pressed to find a libertarian who will admit to it). Smith urged suspicious attention be paid to any proposed new law or regulation that comes from business, because they “have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public.” Or the teenage capitalism will promise to stay home alone while you’re gone for the weekend and then throw that kegger. It can’t help it. It’s a teenager.
So I am fine with capitalism, as long as it’s tightly regulated and on it’s best behavior with clear consequences for every miss-step, and only if we have a strong social welfare system and capitalism is kept out of issues of national or global welfare.
Very interesting……
Go read this article about the welfare state and the ethnic divide in America.
I agree with the premise, that(some)Americans (some white Americans) are resistant to social welfare programs that benefit people who they think are “unworthy”, even if those programs would benefit themselves.
But I also think those people are the screaming, rabid mouthed, teabagging minority.
I think that as we all get pushed further down the ladder into poverty, more American’s are thinking that social welfare programs aren’t so bad. Most people want universal health care, for example. Most folks want single payer or a public option. The one thing about the downward spiral that only the wealthy are immune. When middle class white people can’t get jobs with health insurance, or when that insurance fails to provide actual health care, then the cost/ benefit of racism & classism and even sexism gets to be too high. We’ve seen that with working class households, where dads perform more unpaid family care than dads in upper class houses and where a female bread winner not making the same wage as her male counterparts has a direct effect on their male partners.
No- I don’t think we are a post- anything society. But I do think we are all rational people in the end. Industrial age capitalism ended slavery, and the last Great depression brought us social security, perhaps technology age poverty will bring us something else that is good.