There's a "Nobody expects..." joke somewhere in here...

Coming off the awesomeness that is Eddie Izzard last night (thou shalt not cover thy neighbor's ox!), I just got free tickets to see Spamalot this evening. This week is made of geeky WIN.

Digging Out

I mentioned it in Twitter (have you been watching the sidebar? There is an RSS if you click through), but it bears repeating: the Visa balance is a mighty zero. I have paid off the un- and under-employment months that followed grad school and preceded my current job.

Still working on paying off the computer, though. And Undergrad. But those have nowhere near a 22% APR.

Woo Hoo!

http://wcco.com/education/sex.education.bill.2.710994.html

I know I rarely say this, but let's hear it for the Minnesota House of Representatives!

Here's hoping it replaces abstinence-only sex ed.

This is "Best Judgement?"

Expelling kids for buying decorative swords on a school trip to England? I have never been and will never be for "zero tolerance" policies, but that's not even what they're claiming! They're claiming they used their "best judgment!"

Here's a tip: if your best judgment finds you expelling kids completely for non-threatening behavior, you need to find a new judge. You don't just throw kids away like that. Suspend them, confiscate the swords, put them on probation for exhibiting poor judgment, but recognize that there's a difference between their behavior and an actual physical threat.

Because if the consequences are all going to be the same, what reason do then have not to use them?*

Aside from the fact that they'd probably break. Three swords for $60? Definitely decorative.

The E Makes All the Difference

Poor googlers. All these years, and the reason most people get my blog via google is still because they're too fried to spell heroin correctly. Fewer drugs, more school, people!

Able Bodied

At what point do we get to call the IAAF a bunch of bigoted losers? The guy uses the same prosthetics as multitudes of other amputees, and uses them better than any others. It's not the tools, it's the user. Sure, the prosthetics return 3% more energy to the limb than the average ankle does. (Note: when that study was quoted in the televised story, the numbers were 88% return for the ankle verses 91% for the prosthetic. I am not sure how that translated into a 30% difference.) And yet, Oscar Pistorius is the only amputee anywhere near his level of competition. Further studies have confirmed that it is his use of the limbs, not their very existence, that makes him so fast. The IAAF? Refuses to accept these studies, and relies solely on the energy return study. I'm ready to make the call, y'all: bigoted losers. Studies show they're wrong, but why should science get in the way of small-mindedness.

Also? At which point do we stop calling the other athletes "able-bodied" in comparison?

Twitter

I appear to be tweeting in the sidebar. I have no clue why. But! You should join me. Bafflement loves company.

Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate - CommonDreams.org

So, Hillary just got a little scarier.

EDIT: Confirmed with Jon, it's the same creepy group he crossed paths with.

Son of EDIT: Jon brings the linkage. Click through for more and better information.

Anonymous... Editing?

What the everloving hell, folks? Now people can't even sign their names when they correct my spelling? I know it's Vicodin, rather than vicodan. What part of "I'm on cognition-impairing drugs" did you not get? I thought it was funny when I reread it later, but clearly some pedant somewhere always has to be an asshole on the internet. Unless one of you regulars was being a smart-ass and forgot to log in. In which case, dude, just tell me via email next time.

I remember when blogging used to be fun. And damn right I rejected the comment.

This Just In:

Vicodan makes me hate things.

Seriously, I'm so grouchy right now that even I don't want to be around me. I'm going to bed. *pouts*

Toeing the Line

I have decided to diagnose myself with a condition that shall be henceforth known as Angry Toe. I called the nurse to find out if my blood tests had shown anything. She told me that they did not, and that I am A-OK. Which would have been fine, except that I'm not. I'm pretty sure not being able to walk without pain is not the definition of A-OK. So I asked if I could expect a call from the doctor to discuss these results and plan further action.

Y'all, she was confused. So I explained that, despite the proven therapeutic effects of x-rays and blood draws, my foot was not in fact better. She said she'd have the doctor call.

And he must have heard me typing, because he just rang. Off to the specialist with me, and in the meantime pain pills and the crutches if it gets too bad.

Blah.

Dusty

You know it's time to vacuum when the cat has a good old-fashioned roll on the carpet and comes up covered in lint. She's speckled!

ETA: Also, she doesn't like it when I type instead of cuddle. So I am forced to cuddle:

So, So, My Toe Sucks... Wait...

Over the past few months I have gradually reintroduced my body to the idea of "physical activity." Most of this has come from walking home from work now that I don't live 15 miles away. It should surprise no one familiar with me or my penchant for injury that this has resulted in discomfort. My left big toe has decided to make walking difficult and painful. At first it was just when I wore the wrong shoes, then when I walked for too long, but now it is any time I attempt to move myself using my feet. Bear in mind I can stand reasonably well with weight distributed evenly side to side and front to back. But the walking, she hurts, and so to the doctor I went.

He is as mystified as me. So far x-rays have shown no fracture, stress or otherwise, and no tumor (props to the doc for not mentioning this possibility before the pics were taken -- the thought never even crossed my mind before it was ruled out). They took blood, which I suspect they would do even if I came in with a splinter, just to make the needle-phobic girl freak. But soon I'll know if I have lyme disease, rheumatoid arthritis (unlikely -- I was tested when I was a teen), or some other inflammatory disease. If blood tests are all negative, I'm back on the train to MRIville, and my friends, that bites. On the other hand, I can still do most of my yoga class, owing
to the focus on evenly distributed weight. Single legged poses are Right Out, but the rest tend to feel pretty good. And darn it, I need the inner peace.

Dolphin Hero

This CNN story is the cutet thing you'll see all day:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/nz.whales.ap/index.html

Mixed-Up Media

I really enjoyed Cloverfiels, but I seem to be confused. My first thought when I saw the monster was "FIN FANG FOOM PUT YOU IN HIS PANTS."

Possibly I have ingested too many comic books.

Quality Reporting

It's almost unintelligible in it's current state (really, does WCCO not employ proofreaders for their website?), but it sounds like this article is about a police office advising a bar that they stop playing hip-hop to get rid of black people and make the white neighbors feel less "discriminated" against.

I just... huh? I don't think this is what they meant by "community policing."

How Not to Honor Dr. King

I've been pissing off Democrats all damn day. I'm usually much more diplomatic when I argue politics with friends, but there are just some things I cannot brook, especially not today. Dr. King's name has been bandied around quite a bit in the political arena lately; this is unsurprising. What is also unsurprising is that a white candidate has managed to monumentally twist history in order to paint a white politician as the "real" hero of the civil rights movement in order claim superiority over a black candidate.

Hillary Clinton's comment went thus: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” Inevitably, Democratically-minded individuals have told me today that I should "re-read the comment, because it doesn't actually say that Dr. King didn't do anything."

Of course it doesn't. What it does is ignore everything that Dr. King accomplished before 1964, and attribute any "real" change he helped bring about to a white politician. Dr. King was working toward equality long before LBJ became president -- the Montgomery Bus Boycott started in 1955. Dr. King helped found the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) in 1957, which organized peaceful protest and voter registration throughout the Jim Crow South. During this time, the US government was hardly a huge help; in fact, Dr. King was wiretapped due to suspected communist involvement owing to his persistent belief in his own personhood. He was leading protests and marches and writing books and preaching peace and equality (and periodically spending time in prison for his troubles) for almost a decade, gradually winning local freedoms one boycott or sit-in at a time, until the US Congress FINALLY passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Which Lyndon Johnson valiantly put his signature on.

The revisionist history of Clinton's statement doesn't stop there. Johnson's signature hardly "got it done." No oppressive system has ever been vanquished solely by a law stating that system is illegal; there are still parts of this country where African Americans are violently unwelcome. It is not "done" by a long shot, and that is one of the most damning points of Clinton's statement; she makes it clear that she is one in a long line of clueless, rich white people who think that because they don't see racism in their everyday, pasty-looking lives we must have achieved equality.

This act of attributing the accomplishments of the entire civil rights movement to one president is troubling in so many ways. First, the paternalistic racial politics cannot be ignored. The suggestion that a white president was the benevolent power who gave the final go-ahead for black personhood glosses over the fact that civil rights were never his to grant. Civil rights in the US were not "given" to black people via legislation. They have been and must continually be taken back from the legacy of slavery and inequality that is our country's history. Clinton's statement exudes racial privilege, implying that she is the LBJ to Obama's MLK, kindly willing to see him as an agent for social change, but claiming political power as her white birthright.

Finally, Clinton's statement is personally insulting to me as a citizen and as a participant in several social movements. The idea that any social or political change is not primarily accomplished by the average, everyday citizens who show up to care is contrary to the democratic principles our country claims to espouse. We the People are those who truly govern this country, and it's time we remember that. It is time we start thinking critically when we elect those who "lead" us, reminding them that they are elected to represent us, that we have a vested interest in what their words say about us.

Which is how I got around to pissing off Democrats today. I do not agree with my friends that Clinton is the left's best chance against the crazy fundies the Republicans are tossing around. I'm more than willing to re-read the quote again, but I'm pretty sure I'll come to the same conclusion. She is engaging in intra-party garbage that only weakens whichever candidate stands in November's general election, and now she's doing it by implying herself to be racially entitled to the nomination. She may end up as the lesser of two evils in November, but right now I'm hoping primary voters will resist her clumsy twisting of Dr. King's legacy to paint herself as Democrats' Great White Hope.

I know, I know

It's been another month! But the show finally opened last week, and things are slightly more sane around here, so here's me making a post.

First, I have to brag. The show got reviewed -- very favorably -- in the Star Tribune. Read it here! Isn't that cool? And the costumes are pretty, too!

In other time-suck news, I celebrated the opening of the show by going out and buying The Sims 2 with a christmas giftcard. It's impossible to play the Sims in anything approaching moderation. I sat down to tinker about with one family's house for an hour the other night, and creakily unfolded myself from the chair two hours later.

Now that life has slowed down, work is picking up. I'd better stop writing in my blog and get to the eleventy-seven things on my to-do list, since I still like this job and would like to keep it. :-)

Watch this case

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/cocaine.sentencing.ap/index.html

This is one of the most glaring racial biases in US law, and SCOTUS
has only just begun to attempt to correct it. The whole article
points up a lot of remaining disparities, including the differential
easing of laws that govern drugs more often used by white people. And
if you're prone to thinking we shouldn't give a damn about the
disposition of drug dealers, tell me who you'd do if caffeine was
suddenly illegal and out of your income range as a result.

Are we still on this?

Teen pregnancies are up for the first time in yonks. This article goes on to say that this revives the "debate" surrounding abstinence-only education. Thing is, in order to have a debate, you generally need two valid sides. Proponents of abstinence-only sex ed are seriously running out of credibility. Study after study has shown that their classes do not decrease teen sexual activity, and have a good chance of increasing rates of risky sexual activity. Know why? Because if adults spend all of their time telling kids not to do it, kids won't know how to do it safely when they decide not to listen to the adults.

But of course, no teenager has ever gone against the expressed wishes of an adult.

This administration has been pretty hardcore about strapping funding to the abstinence-only bomb, and I suspect it's now catching up with them. Here's the deal, though. You either get behind fully legal abortion at any age or you get behind teaching kids to use condoms or the pill*. If you insist on doing neither, you get babies having babies, and then we start this discussion all over as if we've never done the research. And that makes me cranky.


*If you want to make ME happy, you can get behind both. Because if you're old enough to conceive it, you're old enough to make the decision to keep it, and you've got a right to be told how to protect yourself from having to make that decision. And that doesn't even touch how we're failing to keep kids safe from STDs in the name of "innocence."

Oh, Wow, It's Been Over a Month!

I'm still here! The lovely Frog just reminded me that it's been quite some time since I popped in (sorry, frog! It was really sweet of you to come over and poke me, though -- sometimes I wonder if anyone has had the patience to stick around). I've been costuming a show and flying across country to meet The Man's family. Thanks Giving in Los Angeles was beautiful, and watching the denizens of that fair city bundle up in puffy jackets when the temp hit the 60s was priceless. Waking up to -10 degree windchills the morning after we got home? Not so priceless.

Getting this show built is going to run right down to the wire, and is keeping me hopping. The colors and fabrics are gorgeous, and the designs we keep coming up with just get better as we make the transition from 2 to 3 dimensions. Details are here if you'd like to see the final product.

We continue to settle into the house. The Saga of The TV is over, so we now have functional satellite TV (seriously? Don't ask). The cats are still crazy. Tom went to stay with my mother while we were in L.A., and has been whining ever since he came back -- she spoils him like a grandchild. He has finally compromised on the yowling part of the morning, and only starts screeching at us after the alarm goes off. This is an improvement over the 3:30 am wakeup call we got one day last week. The other cat, Fish, is not quite so neurotic. Though she doesn't quite "get" claws, and sometimes makes a velcro sound when walking on carpet. Retract, Fish! Retract!

We're seeing our second plowable snowfall in a week today, and I was lucky enough to get a ride home from my very cool boss. I could have walked it, but with feet that hurt if I'm not in sneakers and sneakers that are far from waterproof the ride was much appreciated.

So. I've covered cats, the weather, my current big timesuck, and my latest wanderings. I'll try not to disappear on you again!