Monthly Archives: May 2009

Sick at Heart

I am grieving today for a man I’ve never met.  Until this day, I was only vaguely aware of him.  Who is this man?  Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who performed late-term abortions.  He was one of only three doctors in the country to handle such abortions.  Read the section called Jesus’s Jihadis.  And today, he was shot and killed in his house of worship as he was doing his ushering duties.  Read here, here, here, and here for a little more background.  In the first link, read the section called George Tiller Assassinated. In the last link, there are links to the Freepers, the loony rightwingnutters who read freerepublic online.  I am not linking to them.  You can get there from the last link I gave you.  There replies are repulsive, disgusting, and devoid of any humanity.

Dr. Tiller was shot in the nineties, and he continued to do his work.  Late-term abortion?  That’s the particularly grotesque kind, right?  Uh, not exactly.  Dr. Tiller treated women whose lives were in danger if they continued their pregnancies, who found out that they were further along than they thought they were, and women who were pregnant because of rape and couldn’t get help in time.

First, let me emphasize that his practice was legal.  Second, his community has tried to get him indicted on performing illegal abortions before and has failed.  Third, Bill O’Reilly focused on Dr. Tiller as did Operation Rescue in their war for forced pregnancies.  Operation Rescue considered Wichita to be some kind of ground zero for their cause.

The right is already spin, spin, spinning.  They are bleating that it would be such a shame if anybody on the left used this as a political weapon–which is exactly what the rightwing shills are doing.  They are going on the offensive as they like to do, but will it work?

I am afraid, yes, it will.  See, Dr. Tiller is already being called an abortion doctor, as if that’s the sole purpose of his practice.  Many of the rightwingnutters don’t even bother to try to understand what exactly Dr. Tiller did.  It didn’t matter.  In that way, he was the symbol of everything they hated, loathed, and feared.

I am trying not to devolve into a rant against misogynist rightwingers who want to control women’s sexualities and bodies, but it’s very hard for me not to go there.  I am tired of this shit.  I really am.  I will post more later, maybe.  For now, I’m just going to grieve.

This shit needs to stop.

P.S.   I just donated to Planned Parenthood.  You can, too.

An Elegy for…Me

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pass the mourning of Minna E. Hong.  

Now, of course, I am not dead–otherwise this would be a pretty freaky post.  However, I am slowly letting go of the me that I have been for the last fifteen years or so.  You see, after I graduated from college, I basically curled up in a ball and ossified my way to 38.  Now, I am saying an elegy for that incantation of me because it needs to stay in the past.

 

I’m not saying I didn’t do anything in the last fifteen years because I have.  In fact, I shall list them now.

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Touched, Humbled, and Honored

1bella-award_A very dear friend (whom I’ve never met as she currently lives in France) named Jamie who has the marvelous cooking blog, Life’s A Feastbestowed upon me the Bella Award which is for “One Lovely Blog”.  Now, lovely is not the first word I would affix to my blog, but I am touched, humbled, and honored, indeed.

I met Jamie on the Mudflats blog, and I got to know her better through the wonders of Facebook.  She is a kind, warm, funny woman who bakes a mean chocolate cake.  No, I’ve never tasted it, but I’ve seen pics of it, and I would eat the whole dang thing myself if I could.  I am going to meet her some day, and she is going to make a magnificent feast for us that will make her husband and sons  tremble.  She is upbeat, but also down to earth.  I quickly felt a bond to her that transcends the ether.  Go read her blog, damn it.  Read it now.

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Life is But a Dream

the-nightmare2This is MY brain, and you’re only peeking into it.   As I have blogged about before, I dream a lot.  I remember at least one dream a night, and my dreams are, with very few exceptions, nightmares.  Last night’s dream was no exception, but it was a strange sort of nightmare.  Therefore, I am going to relate it here.  Take a plunge into my very fertile subconscience.*

I am back at St. Olaf College.** I am walking through the post area of the caf with my father.****  

I have to interject and say that my dreams are very movie-like.  I am in them most of the time, but I’m also watching them.  More often than not, there is an annoying narrator as well, but not this time.  The action is usually fast-paced as it was in this dream.  Back to my dream.

I am going into the caf waiting area because I spotted D (my ex) going in there with a friend.  My father and a couple other people are behind me.  My dad warns me not to go in because D is with a girl.  I am puzzled because I had seen him with a guy.  

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She’s a Spicy Tamale!

sonia_sotomayorAnd so it begins.  Even before Sonia Sotomayor was picked by Obama as his first SCOTUS nominee, the monkeys started howling about how unfit she was.  I blogged about the indignation here.  In that entry, I deconstructed what racism feels like (as much as I could) and how white privilege is rampant and unexamined (by certain people) in our society.

Now, Obama has actually made his pick, and it’s Sonia Sotomayor.  Predictably, the reaction on the right has been, “She’s an affirmative action pick!  She’s an activist judge!”  The more egregious quotes are of the, “here’s hoping she can get past her gender, racial, class issues and judge impartially” variety.  The chief idiot of the global climate change deniers, Senator James Inhofe, says that he hopes she can get past the gender, racial thing.  So do other Republicans.  Because, as we know, white men are never influenced by their race or gender, oh no.  Or their political ideologies–nope nope.  In fact, for any conservative who wants to natter on the objectivity of the Supreme Court, I have one thing to say to you, “Gore v. Bush!”  Suck on that.  That ruling was so flawed, even the SCOTUS said, “Hey, man, don’t base any future court rulings on this decision.”  

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Fuck You, California

fuck-you-ca2Subtitled:  I’m taking my next vacation in Iowa.

First of all, I am not a lawyer.  I don’t play one on TV, and I don’t purport to understand all the complexities of our legal system.  I wanted to get that out of the way because I want my not-so-gentle readers to be clear that what I am about to say may have no legal standing.  OK?  OK.  

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time for me to weigh in on the Supreme Court of California upholding Prop H8, which bans same-sex marriages.  If you want nuanced discussions on the legal aspects of the ruling, you’ll have to find another blog.  All I can offer is my own perspective.

Shall I remind you of what my own perspective is?  I am bi.  I am also not supportive of marriage in general because I think it’s unfair for married couples to get benefits (automatic health insurance and cheap hotel rooms) that singles don’t receive.   In fact, I wonder if some of the rightwing belligerence on the point of SSM is because of the fact that they don’t want gays to get the same easy access to healthcare that they do.  Yes, that’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still.  

OK.  So, I am a bi who doesn’t give a shit about marriage.  I don’t intend to marry anyone, so I have no personal dog in this fight.  However, as I have said in other contexts, I am for equal treatment and equal rights across the board.  Therefore, if straights can get married (and divorced and married and divorced), and our government grants rights with that privilege (hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, and the aforementioned healthcare rights), then queers should have the same accessibility to the institution of marriage.

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It’s Torture

waterboarding2I love words, as you know.  Why use one word when ten will do?  That said, I have two words for the ‘debate’ surrounding the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ we employed at Gitmo and other prisons.

It’s torture.  

There can be no debate. 

The right says, “But it works!”  Then, the left gets derailed into whether it actually worked or not.  No, no, no, we say.  It’s specifically designed to elicit false confessions.  I mean, who wouldn’t make up shit to get the pain to stop?  We go on the defense, trying to refute the meme that torture works (only on the show 24, apparently), until we lose sight of the original argument.

It’s torture.

We are America.  We do not torture.  

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Fuck the World; I Wanna Get Off

the_way_outI don’t belong in this world.  I realized that when I was in my teens, but I have felt it since–well since I was sentient, I suppose.

I tried to fit in–god knows I tried.  However, I could never imitate that which I didn’t quite understand.  I did my best.  I had feathered bangs in high school, and I wore the requisite baby blue cable-knit sweater for my school picture senior year.  No matter what I did, though, I was always slightly off.  

You see, it’s hard to imitate human feelings.  I am somewhat emotionally autistic in that I am not certain how to respond at times.

Let me backtrack a second.   I have a couple weird-ass, um, talents, I guess you could call them.  One is that I can predict things at the oddest times.  It usually happens when I am watching a game.  Right before something happens, I get a premonition, and I know what’s going to happen. 

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A Life Worth Living

spaceOK, I lied.  I do have something to say.  Here we go.

My life has been defined by what I’m not and what I don’t like.  When I was a kid, I didn’t like playing with dolls.  I didn’t want to wear skirts or dresses.  I didn’t dream about my wedding day, and I didn’t much care for anything outside of reading and some sports.  As a kid, I wasn’t popular at all.  I was smart, but I didn’t fit in.  I didn’t look like other people, and I certainly didn’t think like them.  I would rather climb trees than play jump rope.  I would rather play with the boys than with the girls.  

Ok.  Skipping to religion.  I didn’t believe in capital-G God, no matter how much I tried.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that there was some guy up in the sky and that He actually gave a shit about, well, anything.  In fact, I forgot to add in my week-long series that my current conclusion about god is that if he/she/it exists, he/she/it is very laissez-faire about matters on earth.  I imagine he (let’s just say he for now) is off somewhere partying his ass off and not paying attention to all the shit happening on earth.

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Meh, in the Internet Sense

I’m not feeling it today.  Here’s a video for you.  Maybe I’ll be hit with inspiration later.  Oh, I have to say one thing.  A woman on Balloon Juice, who also has a thing for Alan Rickman, has a friend who had a drink with him.  I am eaten up with envy.  That is all.