Do You Know What Day It Is?

It's Girl Genius Day! If you aren't reading it already, you ought to be!

Why are you still here? I don't have Adventure! Romance! and Mad Science! I don't have a newly released book to enjoy. I don't have Jägermonsters*. But this finely crafted and elegant link here, just like the link above, does and it's awesome!

Really? You're still here? Look, just do me a favor and go over there and click on an ad or something, because I need to find out how this all ends. Do you hear me? NEED TO KNOW! If I don't find out how it ends, I will hunt you down and force you to draw me an ending, and neither one of us wants that, now do we?

*You know I don't, because if I did, the next time you heard from me, I'd be on the news demanding your surrender. Your unconditional surrender.

Why Do People Do That?

[trigger warning: food porn enjoy this otter instead]

I've been on my special no-more-gallbladder-explosions diet since Friday (we already had the week's food bought when I found out I had biliary dyskinesia). So far, so good. Lots of vegetables and fruits, lots of low fat, my gallbladder seems happy. I have even have my insomnia back*.

I was doing okay until Sunday, less than a week after I spent all night in an ER, in pain. On my way to buy dog food (Beneful Playful Life, I spoil that animal rotten) I saw them: Cadbury Mini Eggs. Sweet, crispy candy shell covering smooth, delicious chocolate. Only available three months of the year. Perfection. I'll eat an entire seven ounce bag myself, in one sitting. Actually, I'll eat an entire two pound bag myself, in one sitting.

There is a perfect way to eat Cadbury Mini Eggs. You hold them in your mouth until the shell cracks under the slightest pressure of your tongue, then you suck off the crispy shell and let the chocolate just melt on your tongue. The crackle of the sweet shell, the smooth, melted chocolate . . .

That's right, I'm on the fifth day of my diet and I'm already writing food porn. I can't imagine what I'll be doing in a month, masturbating to the cooking channel?

The problem is, at first, the pain was a fantastic motivator. The memory of it, fresh in my mind, pulsating from my back, punching through to my front, forcing tears to roll down my cheeks, was plenty enough to make me walk away from that chocolate perfection. Even now, with the memory of the pain fading, the fact that I did go to the hospital is enough motivation. I live 100% of my life in some kind of pain or another, it really has to be epic to force me to the ER at 11pm.

But in a month? Six months? A year? I doubt it. By then, the pain will be a distant memory, too far away to affect my behavior at all. By then, I'll think that Cadbury Mini Eggs are totally worth it. I won't think that when they set off another attack, but by then it'll be too late.

So why do people do that? Why do people eat fatty foods when it will give them a heart attack? Why do people stop taking their medication when it means a relapse into a psychotic state? Why do diabetics eat doughnuts?

That's why. For the same reason you went back to your exboyfriend three times. Sure, the first time you dated him, you didn't know, but after the first five times he cheated on you? After the hundredth time he lied to you? You knew better. Then time passed, and the memory of the pain faded and you were lonely and there you go. Doing the stupidest thing you could. Knowing damn well it's stupid, but convincing yourself it's totally worth it.

For the same reason you went to a bar to watch the Sunday doubleheader, and stayed to drink with your buddies, even though you knew you had work the next day, knew you'd be paying for it in pain and vomiting. You did it anyway.

You already know why schizophrenics stop taking their meds. It's not some kind of mystery. You already know why I'll eat that chocolate, even though it'll land me in the hospital. You do it, too. You just don't end up in surgery because of it, or shouting random nonsense about the CIA planting chips in your brain. This doesn't make you any better, it just makes you luckier.

*My healthy is not quite your healthy.

The Patriarchy Just Wants to Protect Your Pretty Little Face

You know why women shouldn't leave their homes, let alone be politicians? It's not because the patriarchy loses a little more power every time a woman stands up to be counted, it's because women getting shot upsets the poor little mens. Much more so than men getting shot.

We should elect old men to Congress — craggy, musty old men. And if they got shot, it wouldn’t feel so bad. Gabrielle Giffords is a pretty young woman, and no doubt she is capable and intelligent, but I feel protective toward her and it hurts me more to think of her critical wounds than if she was a man.

First of all, if she were a man. WERE! Gah!

Secondly, what kind of fucked up are you that you value attractive women over men? I feel the same about an old man being shot as I do about an attractive younger woman being shot because I actually value human life. You do not. I do feel worse about children being shot, but that's different. Children =/= to . . . oh, fuck, to you children are equal to women, aren't they*? And you're just doing us all a favor by making sure we have no access to power. Because it would hurt your widdle feelings extra if something happened to us.

I’m not sure about old men necessarily, but men are more suited to higher political office, and not because women are incompetent. Leaving aside other more important reasons, there is danger involved. A man’s life is not less valuable than a woman’s, but something in us instinctively feels greater offense at a woman being attacked than a man and that something is a realistic awareness that women are less capable of defending themselves.

Men are more capable of defending themselves from automatic weapons? Last time I checked, men are not made of Kevlar, you misogynist fuck. (Yes, the writer is a woman, and yes, she is a misogynist fuck.) There is an amusing story about the first female Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. Israel was having a problem with rape at the time, so other male leaders suggested that women be subject to a curfew in order to protect them. She replied that it would make more sense to put a curfew on the men, since they were the ones committing the rapes. That ended any talk of curfew.

My point being that the problem isn't that women are politicians. It's that people sometimes shoot politicians, male or female. We don't solve that problem by getting rid of politicians (although that would solve a lot of other problems), we get rid of people who shoot politicians. They are the criminals, after all.

I hate the smell of misogyny in the morning.

*Children you can fuck! It doesn't take long for the patriarchy to get creepy, does it?

Back Away From the Keyboard, Ma'am

I don't often get outraged. It's just not something I do. It takes a lot of energy for one thing, and I like to save mine for fun stuff, and I have a bizarre sense of humor, so you're more likely to amuse me than outrage me. So, maybe I just don't understand this post because I have an abnormally low sense of outrage. (Like a low WBC count or something.) Or, maybe some people need to back away from the keyboard and take a few Xanax before their heads explode.

The backstory to this is, and honestly I don't even know if this is true, because I don't really care, is that on passports, parents will be listed as "Parent 1" and "Parent 2"* rather than "mother" and "father". Now see if you can reconcile this minor wording change with the vitriole it engenders:

I'm outraged by this. I am not either "parent one" or "parent two" to my beautiful daughters. I AM THEIR MOTHER. And I have the legal right to be recognized as such by every national, state, and local agency that ever has the authority to collect any such information from me.

I'm actually not sure you have a defined legal right to have agencies refer to you as "mother". I actually asked my boss. He laughed, shook his head and walked away. I did a quick check in the Constitution. Nothing there.

Anyway, wtf do you care? Does this person think that, due to a wording change on an official document, our entire society is going to stop using the word "mother"? Does she think motherhood itself will disappear and possibly also her children?

Look, here's reality. We're living in it, whether you like it or not. (Frequently, I do not.) There are people raising children who do not fall into the role of mother and father. Hey, I was one of them for years. My husband and I raised my niece for a number of years**. We were not "mother" and "father". We were parental figures, to be sure, just not mother and father. But that's not what our friend is so outraged about. Can you guess what it is she so outraged by?

If two gay men are raising one or the other's biological child or a child they've adopted, or a child they paid a reproductive prostitute to manufacture for them, they can call themselves the child's "fathers," plural, until the cows come home. The child still has one father. And if two lesbians are raising a child as stated above, they can also insist on being "Mommy One" and "Mommy Two" to the poor child they are raising. The child has one mother--either one of them, or a woman who gave the baby up for adoption, or a reproductive prostitute who was paid to manufacture a child for them. No human being on the planet has more than one actual father and one actual mother; no human being has ever been born as the result of the genetic combination of two sperm cells or two egg cells.

Ah, Teh Gai. Feel the Christian love, so indistinguishable from hate. Watch as it drips down your screen like maggots from a bloated corpse. Luffly, isn't it? Here's the thing: I could buy her argument that adoptive gay parents are not mothers and/or fathers, except that I guarantee you she would say no such things about heterosexual adoptive parents, who are also, technically, not mothers and/or fathers to their children. Adoptive heterosexuals are mothers and/or fathers, adoptive homosexuals are not.

And god(s) forbid anyone mistake her for a gay person, which, in her bizarre world, could possibly happen with the new Parent 1 and Parent 2 designations. I have a suggestion, oh hateful one: carry around pictures of your children emerging from your vagina, as well as a picture of you and your husband having sex. Show them to everyone who sees these passports so they do not mistake your for a homosexual person. Have "I am not a faggot" tattooed on your forehead so the rest of us, who have no reason to see your childrens' passports, will know as well. Quite frankly, I would appreciate knowing exactly who to stay the hell away from.

*Who did not immediately think of Thing 1 and Thing 2? I want to be Parent 1 or Parent 2 and I want my passport photo to clearly show the special sweater I will buy for just that occasion. See, I'm amused, not outraged.

**Proudest Parent 2 moment: my niece texted me during the Eagles game yesterday (yes, I am still weeping bitterly) to beg me to update her on the game because her mother had changed the channel. I love that kid.

History Needs More Master Chief

The Dragon Issue Is too Often Overlooked

Dying to Self or Being an Self Righteous Doormat? You Decide.

If there is one phrase peculiar to evangelical Christians that really rubs me the wrong way, it's "dying to self". Purely as an English construction, that is meaningless. To evangelicals, it means, well, this:

When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don't sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

"Set at naught"? I like Jane Austen and I have no idea what that means. As to the rest, let's examine emotions for a moment, and why we feel them and the validity of feeling emotions. First of all, humans feel emotions. It's what we do. So do dogs, cats, gorillas, horses and pretty much anything with a brain. Apparently, Christians strive to be on the level of insects, which may very well be quite passionate beings for all I know. So rocks. These people aspire to be as rocks.

So, we feel emotions, what does that mean? Well, in the above examples, it means that your reaction to others' actions is something you have to deal with. If my friends forget about me, I will be hurt. For good reason. It's not nice for my friends to forget me. My emotions make me deal with it. Ignoring my friends' neglect of me is stupid. They'll keep neglecting me. I won't get what I need from friends, which is not being neglected and forgotten. I need to confront my friends, get them to stop neglecting me, or find friends who won't forget about me.

Either way, emotions are a good thing*. Ignoring them isn't. It's not being like Jesus, it's setting oneself up for abuse and mental illness.

Look at it this way, if one is healthy, pain is a good thing. Pain tells you that you are hurt and need to do something. Without pain, you would never know, and die from untreated infections or a burst appendix. Emotional pain is the same way. Yes, it sucks to be sad and angry when someone mistreats you, but it motivates you to change things so your relationships are healthy again. Ignoring pain, whether emotional or physical, is a very bad idea.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

That is accepting abuse without complaint. What is wrong with people? Also, "when your good is evil spoken of" is the most ridiculous English construction I have ever seen. I know what she's trying to say, but there are far better ways of saying it. Talking like Yoda does not poetry make.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality, or any annoyance; when you stand face-to-face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility-and endure it as Jesus endured.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

How Jesus endured waste, folly and extravagance? You mean like fucking up the moneylenders in the Temple? That Jesus? Anyway, one of my SILs was always late for everything. We started telling her events started an hour before they did and she still showed up late. Then we just started without her, and guess what? She now shows up on time. You want people to continue to be "unpunctual" (srsly, wtf?), just let it go. You want people to show up on time? Do something about it.

When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society, any raiment, any interruption by the will of God.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

I guess the author would be perfectly happy with eating tarantulas while wearing a show girl outfit in the Antarctic. Or not. Constantly bitching about things that can't be changed is bad for you and everyone around you. Saying you'd prefer steak to the ramen noodles you've been eating for two weeks straight is just being human. Which these people are clearly opposed to.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendations, when you can truly love to be unknown.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

That's called being a cipher.

When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

That is being a nice person. You're still a nice person if you care about your own needs, however.

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart.

~THAT IS DYING TO SELF~

Oh, get over yourself. Now you're just being obnoxious. Not even Jesus took that kind of shit, unless you missed all his arguing with the Pharisees.

Are you dead yet?

Freaky! Are you dead yet. And they mean it. Are you, the unique person with needs and wants and desires gone? Have you stopped with all that unacceptable human emotion? Have you become a robot, a cipher a Stepford Wife? Better hurry up, god has no use for real people.

There are excellent reasons I am an atheist.

*Assuming one is emotionally and mentally healthy, of course. Emotions can be an absolute curse if one is not, but we'll assume reasonable mental health for this post.