It’s About Time Wednesday

I am so looking forward to the rest of the posts in this series: How to be a Feminist boyfriend.

Guest Blogging for Jesus Wednesday

Guest blogger Sparkle Pants imparts more wisdom. And profanity.

University Politico and I have been friends for a good long while. A lot of people don’t like that we’re friends because we make them uncomfortable or because they think one is trying to steal the other away from someone or something. You know, I get it. I really do. I think everyone has been dealt a shitty hand at least once in their lives. You know the shitty hand I’m talking about. The one where there’s a choice to be made and you end up getting left in the cold? That one. Sometimes the choice-making is unconscious and isn’t done with malice*. But you know, you end up in the cold and you really hate the new pairing and you want them to suffer. So you make one or both of them suffer as much as you can. Our former church did that to us. People we thought (think?) loved us did that to us.

Y’all, I don’t know why you find us so damn offensive. We’re fairly harmless people. We don’t kill kittens or punch little old ladies in the face. We don’t have enough money to cause a ruckus on the weekends**. We recycle and use paper bags at the grocery store and yield to pedestrians. We aren’t threatening your precious heterosexuality. We are challenging your heteronormativity and maybe your comfort level, if you dislike seeing two girls hold hands or hug or, you know, actually like spending time together.

In the past eight years, we’ve changed a lot as individuals and as a unit. We’ve discovered that the only people we can rely on to be honest with us is each other. It’s sad but it’s true. That’s all part of growing up, right? Learning these lessons about the true nature of the people around us (humanity, the global community, etc.) hasn’t been fun and it hasn’t been easy. Right now, we’re in pretty much the darkest part of our lives. We both suffer from severe depression*** and when we turn to the people we think understand us and care about us and all we get is cruel rebuffs, well…do I have to spell it out for you? We’re just going to stop relying on those people for emotional support because it’s easier than getting shat upon. I mean, I have a good friend who knows a lot about me and our situation and assured me that she understood and then one day, she asked me if I was lying about not being in love with UP. I’m sorry, what? Excuse me if I don’t confide in you ever again.

We love the people in our lives to a fault. Rabidly, loyally. Bend us over, fuck us with something hard and sandpapery, and we’ll probably stand back up and open our arms for a hug. UP has been dicked over more times than I can count [and I've personally witnessed a lot of it up close and in person] and she’s still all totally in love with pretty much every person who has done the dicking. So maybe that’s one of her biggest faults. That she loves people as unconditionally as is possible. Personally, I like to yell at people for awhile and then love them unconditionally. Yelling makes me feel better. I won’t lie.

So this is my plea to the World: please please please for the love of all that is holy and scared in this universe, please stop. Just stop. Give us a fucking break already. This isn’t fair anymore. It isn’t funny anymore. The two of us, we’re just two girls trying to get through life without ruining everyone else’s in the process. We’re not asking for much. Just a break. Just some people to believe us when we say we’re sick and we’re broke and we’re really not secret lesbians. We. Cannot. Take. Much. More.

Love,
Your Guest Blogger for Jesus

*Unless your name is [censored]. I assure you, my dear, she has not pulled a Selena on me. Yet.
**Or pay the rent or the electric bill or the water bill or buy groceries, but you go ahead and keep that $20.
***Seriously stop making us more depressed, World.

Naming My Sister Tuesday

Okay, to satisfy my sister I will not call her fatty. I will call her The Sperm Whale. Because I like superfluous articles, and she is going to look like a whale, because of sperm.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a nickname for this? Something I can yell down the hall to get her to listen to me?

Not Naming Babies Tuesday

Okay, srsly OMG SHOEZ.

None of that last post is true except the part about my nephlet having surprised the Ultrasound Tech with his penis.

O.K. Fatty?

[edit: and the Brody part]

[edit again: and the wanting to be Posh Spice thing]

Naming Babies Tuesday

I was attempting to get my sister to listen to my serious baby name suggestions [Diablo, Johnson, Beowulf, etc.] … She has had some truly horrible ideas. Brody, for example. Also today Albert, Nigel, and Bertie.

But I think they’ve finally settled on a name for my nephlet, which is super exciting.

Beckham.

Isn’t that the most adorable, precious name for my soccer playing sister to name her constantly kicking baby?

Also, yesterday they had another ultrasound because the last one didn’t show if it had a brain or not… Here I am quoting the tech:

Ultrasound Technician: Cannot get gender to confirm…. Oh, HELLO!

This is particularly wonderful news for me, as I want to be Posh Spice, and I feel like it’s Christmas all over again!

It’s Not Really Tuesday Yet Tuesday

So yes, those things are all true. I have been transported por avion to the other side of the country, where my native neighboring plants doth attack me with their ravenous spores. My body weeps, through boxes of Kleenex and toilet paper rolls and a course of antibiotics, for the sweet, sweltering south… where I hear it has been raining, so maybe we’ve been good little girls and boys.

My grandfather, a curmudgeonly Democrat until his last breath (at 91) passed away suddenly, and it became a series of phone calls and OMG SHOEZ (the posting of which I did insist upon) and all of a sudden and a credit card number… I was back on the West Coast…the Left Coast…the Best Coast. I am suddenly plunged into the arms and teachings of my dear Cathol. Those of us who ascribe to other ideas or theories that do not quite line up…who leave out the “and apostolic” portion of “I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church” Or who say Catholic likes this: catholic (see, tiny c) which just means universal and not that I believe that Pope Palpatine has any more a direct line to God than any of us do, Whom or Whatever She/He/It may be. What was I saying?

Blah about religion, okay? Srsly. Quaker, baker, candlestick maker. I like the guy on the Oatmeal box, so that’s my religion, dudes. Blahdi blah bananacakes.

I have said the Our Father more times than possible. Once, just to piss off my dead grandfather, I whispered it like this:

Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos,
Santificado sea tu nombre
Venga tu reyno
hagase tu voluntad, así en la tierra como en el cielo.
Danos hoy nuestro pan cotidano, y perdónas nuestras deudas,
así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores [ouch. that one hurts.]
y no nos metas en tentación,
mas libranos de mal
Amén

Just because he’s grumpy about Latinos and immigration issues, and I work primarily in that area.

[and yes, I really know it that way, because of all the times I went to parts of México that are NOT Tijuana or Ensenada or wherever else people go. Diós le bendiga, okay? omg shoez! ]

Okay, so maybe I said it more than a few times in Spanish. Yes, yes. Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por mi, porque estoy una chica mala.

Then of course, I got sick. The can’t sleep, can’t stay awake, can’t get up, can’t stay in bed, can’t breathe, can’t eat, get hungry, can’t focus, can’t talk, can’t type, can’t find words… get very angry kind of sleep.

[random] My sister and her husband rock [/random]

By the end of the conversation I had with my father tonight, all I could say was “I hate everything.” And I don’t particularly MEAN it, but really, it’s the easiest thing for my mouth to say. Politics? Fuck it. Feminism? Fuck it. Obama? Fuck him. Clinton? Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck it all. I hate them. I hate everything. Bladiblah bananacakes.

And so, if you want to communicate with me whilst this…thing mutates itself in my body it will either have to be

1) in Spanish
b) an easily recognizable portion of the liturgy (for we believe in the teachings of Cathol!)
CUATRO) with the following phrases: Fuck [blank]; I hate [blank], and for everything not adequately expressed in those two phrases: OMG SHOEZ.

Because those shoes are MINE. BETCH.

OMG Shoes Monday

This post brought to you by guest blogger, Sparkle Pants. And also wine. And Justin Timberlake.

First things first.

All right, now we can move onto more important topics. If you’re wondering why I’m guest blogging here, it’s because University Politico is away in her home state because of a family emergency. She’s near a computer but also nearer to death with a cold/allergies/sinus infection, so here I am. She wants you all to know that she loves you a lot. Right now she’s on speaker phone with me and I heard something about chalupas. Mmmm Taco Bell.

Hey! Can you guys pick me something up while you’re out? It won’t be at all stank nasty by the time it gets here or anything.

So I sat down here with absolutely no idea what to talk about. UP told me to blog about what’s going on in her life and this is what is going on in her life: sad, sad, tears, sad, sneeze, cough, blow nose, hit inhaler, omg shoes, sad, tears, sneeze, cough, cough, cough, choke, sad, tears, cough, choke, omg shoes, betch.

Life in The Casa de OMG Shoes is pretty boring. I cleaned the entire place Friday night and Saturday because I had two hot guys over (yeah, unsupervised and everything!) and it was then that I realized that what seems like a slightly dirty home is actually a fucking pigsty. No, really. But the effect was worth it because I swear to god, one of the first things one of them said when they came inside was, “It smells SO GOOD.”

So Justin Timberlake is here with me right now and I’d have him sit down and say something but he’s too busy practicing his stripper routine. He keeps bitching at me because I took down the pole and “how can I do anything good without the pole, Sparkle Pants?” and shit like that. I do not know where he got this diva attitude from, but I’m pointing all fingers at JC because he is the most diva of them all. The divaest of the divas.

All right. I think I’m done guest blogging. I might guest blog again later in the week when University Politico harasses me to TELL MORE ABOUT WHAT SHE IS DOING RIGHT NOW, which is really just code for BLOG ABOUT WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT, SPARKLE PANTS!

Love,
Sparkle Pants

P.S.
omg shoes.

Female Agenda Thursday

O’Reilly guest bleats about the ‘female’ agenda. [from Pandagon]

I’m taking a mental break from the university student murders to put my anarcho feminist hat back on for a minute. Watch this video. Seriously.

The FEMALE Agenda. The FEMALE AGENDA?

And people are claiming sexism is dead.

I don’t even know what to say about Geraldine Ferraro. I’m trying to figure out why my views on her comments don’t line up with the “liberal” media’s ideas. Either it’s the multiple viruses currently pounding my lungs, stomach and head to a merciless death or I’m crazy.

Stay tuned for more once I’m coherent.

“Emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is Godliness and God is empty, just like me” Monday

There are some days when I can do little more than get out of bed. The mere idea of being awake is enough to overwhelm me, and I just can’t wait until the time when I can be asleep again.

I’ve been an insomniac since I was 16… In fact, I don’t remember sleeping well before that, I think that I just noticed it then, because that was the year my dad moved out and my mom went back to school and the house was so quiet.

Lately there have been things roaming around in my subconscious that are preventing even the insane medications I’ve been prescribed from letting me sleep more than four hours every few days. I sit around awake and tired all night. I sit around awake and tired all day. I have very real things I could be getting done, but most of them involve some form of human interaction, and I just don’t do well with that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about random acts of violence in the last few days. Thinking about these murders has had a great deal to do with that, I’m sure… but beyond that, I’m thinking of my own desire to commit random acts of violence. Sometimes I feel like my skin is too small for all of the anger that’s inside of me, and if I don’t slam something into the wall, or better yet, tear the entire goddamn wall down, I’ll probably explode. Sometimes my anger is directed at people, but not usually… Usually when I’m angry with people I want to kick inanimate objects until those objects TRULY understand how pissed off I am. Like the vacuum cleaner, or my bathroom door. They REALLY need to know that I am angry, goddamnit. That I am unable to control the world around me, that I’m unable to control the world inside my house, or even the world inside of my head. Evidenced by the fact that I’m not sleeping. Evidenced by the fact that I’m fake!emoting. Evidenced by every single thing that’s outwardly visible to any random person who might come into contact with me.

I have a post in response to Democrat1’s comment from yesterday that I fully intend on writing, but today… I’m just so angry. I suppose I could take it as one of the stages of grief, and it is… I just feel like my entire life is a continuous circle of grief. A carousel of grief and I can’t get off and I can’t get the fucking brass ring, either. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Skip the Acceptance. Later, rinse, repeat. My life is a Kübler-Ross model and I hate it. I hate it so much I want to kick my bathtub.

There are things that need to be done…there are things that need to be done. There are things that need to be done.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression.

Acceptance, please? I’m ready any time You are.

Oh No You Di’unt Saturday

I’ve been spending some time reading the comments on news sites about the deaths of Lauren Burk [of Auburn University] and Eve Carson [of UNC Chapel Hill]. At first it was just a passing interest – I was finding links to paste in here about both of the girls, and stumbled upon 150 comments on the Carson story that had been posted since her identity had been published. I went through and read the first page, expecting to find the normal condolences and some insane troll blather… What I didn’t expect to find were actual commenters berating Carson and, yes folks, blaming her for the Iraq War and the deaths of millions of people outside of America.

Why? Because she was white, pretty and Southern.

Of course the requisite “this wouldn’t have been national news if she weren’t white” comments were there, which turned into a huge argument about racism – not only in the media, but personal racism as well. Folks are saying that since both girls are from Georgia, which is a state in the south, and were killed in Southern States [Alabama and North Carolina], that they were obviously Bush supporters, and that [and this comes from an actual commenter on the Carson story at ABC News' official site] since “Linciln” said that the U.S. government was “of the people, for the people and BY THE PEOPLE [the commenter didn't spell it that well, but I don't want to get into a pissing contest about whether or not commenters can spell and what that implies about their intelligence], that they were each responsible, personally, for the deaths of “millions” of Iraqi civilians.

Now, I am a United States citizen. With that European law about being able to get citizenship in a country where a grandparent was born, I could move to England, but really – the only countries outside the U.S. that I’d consider at this point are The Netherlands, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland [I hear the Arctic circle has awesome weather in the Winter - perfect for tanning, unless my source is wrong]. Back on topic. I have personally marched against the war not only locally, not only in my home state, but in the Nation’s Capitol. I have written letters to my congresspeople, to my senators, to my president, to the news media. I have screamed my bloody guts out against this insane bullshit going on in Iraq under the U.S. military. I’m a Quaker, for God’s sake [literally, for God's sake...]. I am absolutely opposed to war or to violence of any kind [it's great, also, how people are claiming that if the girls had been armed, none of this would have happened]. I want to set the record straight: that by the people, for the people, of the people, around the people, listening to the people crap has NEVER been true. There has always been someone whose voice this country [and most others] refuses to listen to. The poor. Those who don’t own land. Women. Immigrants. Lesbians and gays and queers of any stripe. A majority of us did NOT elect Bush to the office he holds. In fact, the country was desperately trying to be heard over the bitching about hanging chads – OF the people? Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the very pinnacle of ONE of our branches of government [it's the judicial branch, if you're wondering]. It consists of 9 appointed judges, who are imbued with the power to interpret the Constitution and state and federal law UNTIL THEY DIE. A majority of these Justices [many appointed by Reagan and Bush I] decided that our votes didn’t matter – that this country OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people couldn’t wait to find out who had actually won the 2000 Presidential election [it was Al Gore, by the way], so they would just install one for us.

Now, arguably, we elect those people who appoint judges, and those appointments are subject to “ratification” by the U.S. Congress [a bunch of people who have never been influenced by anything but the voices of their individual constituents, of course]. Elect or have thrust upon us by the swelling roots of facism – whatever, same difference.

Call me unpatriotic – go ahead, but people have been in the streets since before these wars began. People have been in the streets every day since before this country was founded. The Equal Rights Amendment, which guarantees absolute equality for the sexes in the eyes of the law, was put forth in 1923 – THREE YEARS after women were given the right to vote in this country. A country that had existed for roughly three hundred years in some form or another before that. We are still a VERY long way from OF the people, BY the people or FOR the people.

Miraculously then, these two women were studying in Universities. Carson was the Student Body President of a University that only began accepting women as students in NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE.

It’s not that we aren’t screaming. It’s not that we’re not protesting. It’s that it isn’t shown. It’s almost never shown.

A country by the people, of the people and for the people? Some of us experience this country as a facist empire. Those of us whose voices aren’t heard – those from lower socio-economic classes, brown people, sexual and gender “atypicals.” Women. Children. The hungry. The tired. The poor. The huddled masses.

I didn’t start the war in Iraq. I never stood with Bush. I never supported his administration, even when I was one of the five or so percent in the country who didn’t. I have voted my ass off. I don’t know about the personal politics of the families from which Carson and Burk come. I don’t know about their personal politics [although Carson appears to have been very involved in women's rights and volunteered to bring health care to third world countries]. The Burk case is turning out to be more about the actual murder, whereas the Carson case has mostly brought us news about the victim. I don’t know. What I do know is this: the citizens of this country did NOT start this war. The citizens of this country are, overwhelmingly, ignored by those in power. I don’t know if God will place the blood of Iraqi civilians on my head. But I didn’t want this, and the fact that both of these MURDER victims were white, southern, “pretty,” female, went to southern Universities and etc. etc. etc. until we die does not mean that either of them asked that we be in the position we are currently in, in any country, anywhere in the world.

Maybe we are to blame, but if we are, it is not because there aren’t people working and fighting against it every day. Right here. Look in the alternative media and you’ll see it. Most of us do not want this war. We hate this war. We mourn for the IRAQIS who are killed, not just the U.S. soldiers who “are depressed” [an actual comment on the Carson story regarding "the reason" why any U.S. citizen is interested in ending the war], and to place blame for this war on the shoulders of two women who were murdered, to say that no one should have heard about these stories on National news, and only did because they were white [does anyone remember the Jena-6? the poor, African-American male who fell from a dorm window at UNC, and whose death made international news? University students "of color" murdered in Louisiana, or Illinois]?

We are fighting enough losing battles in this country. Turning tragedies like this one into soap box opportunities… actually SAYING that either of these girls was responsible for the Iraq war and therefore shouldn’t be mourned… It’s disgusting. Shame on you. Yeah, you. Shame on you. There are plenty of other worthy complaints and statements you can make about this country that I will have no problem listening to, and I’ll probably share your opinion. But tell me Eve Carson deserved to die because she killed millions of Iraqis – and I have no use for you. Yes, Amerikkka is pretty horrible, we do assholeish things – but saying these things makes YOU into the asshole. Rail against my government all you want, but blame murder victims for the actions of our “representatives” and you just might make me reconsider my pacifism.