There’s been a hell of a lot of talk about Sarah Palin and her potential worth as a vice president, and her utterly utterly terrifying views on legislating reproductive rights. And there’s been a lot of talk about her pregnant daughter and OMG! A teenager! Having sex? Pregnant? What an utterly new development! Such a thing has never happened before! An unmarried 17 year who is also pregnant? I thought you HAD to be pregnant to have a baby!

Actually, Bristol Palin is very lucky. 

She grew up in a household that eschews birth control and pre-conception fertility management (and could someone please tell me why so much discussion of this particular issue seems to have a “either she’s pregnant or she gets an abortion” rhetoric instead of “hey, guess what? sex ed! It has a purpose!”) and, surprise, she got pregnant. And her parents… aren’t kicking her out of the house. Which is what a LOT of my high school friends (and hell, some college friends) were afraid of.

Bristol Palin will not have to navigate WIC or state-run health care plans. She will not have to take a bus for an hour and a half to visit a shitty clinic with broken asbestos tile on the floor and no working sinks in the bathroom (hello, Stroger County follow up care after my miscarriage!). She will not have to work a crappy minimum wage job and wonder who’s going to watch her kid while she earns just barely enough money to cover rent. She’s not going to have her parents (or hopefully her boyfriend) beat her up, threaten to kill her, or outright kill her for having sex and getting pregnant.

And that makes her incredibly lucky.

Bristol Palin’s family has money. Bristol Palin and her kid are going to be taken care of, financially and emotionally, by her family. She has a support network.

A hell of a lot of sexually active teenagers, especially young women who wind up pregnant, are not so lucky. The ones who have access to sexual education and contraceptives are a lot less likely to wind up pregnant in the first place, easing them onto a path that’s more likely to include higher education and thus a better paying job.

Sarah Palin thinks that women don’t deserve to know about or control their sexuality. Sarah Palin doesn’t care that teenagers, both male and female, can and do have sex. When teenagers are having uninformed, unprotected sex they are really likely to get pregnant. Having a baby at 17, for most kids, is a really bad idea that will literally cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in earning potential and also cost the government money in aid spent on them. Not all sexually active kids have parents who can support them, provide them and their babies with medical care, and take care of them. Not all sexually active kids have parents who are willing to provide for them and their babies and support them. And Sarah Palin wants to take away some of the tools that young people can use to protect themselves and guard their futures.

Sarah Palin wants to stop funding sexual education in schools. Sarah Palin is against women having control of their own reproductive rights. Sarah Palin’s local government charged victims of rape for the rape kits used to collect evidence to bring charages against the people who raped them. Sarah Palin is actively working to undermine the many many hard-won rights that women have struggled to achieve. Sarah Palin apparently thinks that women don’t deserve the same rights and considerations that men deserve, and thinks that women are incapable of making informed, responsible choices about their bodies. 

Not all women have a mommy and daddy who can step in to take care of them. Not all women have a mommy and a daddy who can provide them with a husband to take care of them. Not all woman want to be treated forever as children, in the care of their parents, their husbands, their government. Not all women want their choices, their autonomy, stripped from them.

It’s not surprising that McCain, who has actively worked against basic sexual and human rights for women and homosexuals has picked someone like Palin. It’s sickening how many people applaud her. She’s worked hard to get where she is, yes. I respect that. But she’s done so at the expense of other women, and the young people following her. She’s spitting in the face of every woman who fought to be considered not property, who fought to be able to work outside the house, who fight still to get equal pay for equal work and who fight for things like restraining orders being actively enforced, men who commit domestic violence being actually prosecuted, men who commit rape being actually charged for their crimes. She stands on the backs of those women, who fought for her to be able to stand where she stands now, and she spits on them.

Bristol Palin is lucky that when she’s in a time of need her family is there for her. But I wish she had options and had been able to make choices on her own, instead of having them thrust upon her by people who think they know better than she does.

this is short, I will write more later, I promise. But.

I got a new work computer because my old one launched itself into space.

I worked hard all day today and got up at 5:00pm to go home, gathered up my stuff, looked down at my cellphone, and saw it was only 4:00 pm. My computer’s time was off! I STILL HAD AN HOUR OF WORK LEFT TO DO. This is a terribly unfair thing to happen and I feel like someone handed me a piece of candy, then stole it from me again. BOOOOOO.

How was your weekend? We went down to the Kankakee River and cooked meat over open flame, and I played not-fetch with my parents’ dog. Not-fetch is where you pretend to throw a ball or whatever but don’t actually and the dog goes tearing off after nothing and then comes back looking at you like you’re the most hilarious jerk ever, and could you please just throw the damn ball already so her life can be complete? And then you throw it for reals and she runs after it and you alternate real throwing with fake throwing to keep her on her toes and it’s pretty awesome. I miss having a dog.

I’m going to St. Louis MO this evening and will be there until Saturday morning, when I fly back. The only thing I’ve packed so far is some toiletry items. I haven’t flown in some 15 years and am a little nervous about TSA problems. Also, I think I won’t have fun internet access until I return, which is a sad, sad thing. :(

Tell me about business trips you’ve been on, and/or adventures while flying.

Also, tell me if you live in/near St. Louis MO; maybe we can do something?

Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette will be at DucKon this year. It’s really close to where I live, a friend of mine is already going so I’d have someone to hang out with, etc etc etc. But it’s $50 that I don’t have.

DANG IT.

Thanks, Fox News, for reminding us yet again that it doesn’t matter that Michella Obama is an adult professional woman, educated at Princeston and Harvard, a lawyer and successful in her own right. She is to be labelled based on her relationship with a man. Obama’s Baby Mama. Nice. She has no other identity or status, and certainly doesn’t merit terms like “wife” or “spouse” or “partner.” No. As she has a uterus, she is to be defined soley by the fact that she’s had kids and is in a relationship with a man. Never mind that she and her husband were married for six years before they had their first kid. No no no. She’s a woman. Let’s not give her any respect, ok?

Also, in case you hadn’t noticed? She’s Black. You might have somehow over looked that, but it’s true. She’s OMGBLACK and Barack Obama is also OMGBLACK (and has a funny name! What’s UP with that? It just SOUNDS unamerican!) and they are probably terrorists.

I want to start calling Laura Bush George Bush’s Baby Mama. You know. Restore some dignity to the White House.

What’s your normal morning routine?

Mine goes like this:

Nesko gets out of the bathroom and wakes me up.
We exchange our morning greeting.
I grope around for my glasses.
I mutter and grumble and get out of bed and go into the bathroom.
I use the toilet, get up, floss and brush my teeth.
Realizing I’ve forgotten to take my drugs, I wander into the kitchen and take them.
I head back into the bathroom and sniff the towels to see if they smell mildewey. If so, I throw them on the floor and get clean towels. If not, I leave them hanging.
I turn on the shower and grumble about the water temperature not being right, then get in.
I get my head good and wet and rub my scalp.
I look at the squirt bottles on the edge of the tub and figure out if I’m going to use BS or castille soap on my hair, or just use water.
I shake up the baking soda mixture and start squirting it onto my scalp between my hair in sections. I massage in little circles, adding more bs and water as I go.
I rinse my scalp thoroughly under hot water, then wash my face with liquid castille soap and a washcloth.
I rinse my face off, rinse my hair, then squeeze it out.
I use the second squirt bottle to soak my hair with lemon juice and water or apple cider vinegar and water, and let it sit for a few minutes.
I soap up the scrub brush and wash most of my body with it. Scrub scrub scrub.
I rinse my hair thoroughly.
I scrub my back, shoulders, and bottom with the soapy scrub brush.
I warsh ma bits.
Rinse, rinse, rinse.
Maybe shaving takes place.
rinse rinse
I bend over facing the shower, hold the shower head in one hand, pull my hair so it’s hanging down, turn the hot water off all the way, and rinse my scalp and hair with OMG! COLD! WATER! AGH!
I turn off the water and squeeze my hair out.
I fumble around for a towel and wrap my hair up, get out of the shower, dry off with another towel.
Deoderant is applied.
I mumble my way into the bedroom where I oil up my feet and get dressed.
Back into the bathroom to remove the towel, comb out my hair, and try to decide if my damp hair will look oily later on or not, and should I take a hat to work (answer: always take a hat to work JUST IN CASE).
Sniff towels again. Mildewey? Put in laundry basket. Not mildewey? Hang to dry.
Give Nesko kisses.
Grab something to eat.
Head out the door.
commute commute commute
HELLO WORK.

On the weekend, I sometimes skip the shower part, or just use hot water to wash my hair and follow up with the cold water rinse.

What are YOUR mornings generally like?

I have a lot of friends online and sometimes I dream about them, which is pretty weird because most of them are acquaintances who I’ve never actually met. But we’ve talked enough that I, in general, have a pretty good idea of who they are and what they’re about, and sometimes they lodge themselves in my subconcious brain and then I dream about them.

Last night, I dreamt about Meopta, who is on my LJ F-list. She’s been on my mind lately because she had (has? do you ever really totally get rid of cancer permanently?) cancer and is still in treatment for it and she’s got little kids and I fret about her and her kids and her family because woah. This is some pretty big fucked up shit going on, and she’s really awesome, and the world needs more people like her. So she’s definitly been taking up some mental space recently. But I haven’t been, like, dwelling on her. So her showing up in my dreams? Kind of wacky.

Anyway, in the dream I was living with my parents. I don’t know how to put this… I don’t frequently dream that I live with them, and I don’t regularly dream that I live with them, but I have dreamt several times that I live with them. One thing that’s the same about the dreams is that my bed/living space is generally in a public area with no walls or door. The living-with-parents part of the dream wasn’t unpleasant, but then I went to bed and I could dimly hear a party coming from a different part of the house… or apartment building? Things were kind of fluid, the way they are in dreams. I went over to the party and it was being thrown by Meopta, who apparently threw a big shindig once a week or once a month. It was with regularity! See, she knew that it was important to celebrate life and the people you love, so she made a regular attempt to connect with people. In the dream, I resolved to do similarly, to start having game nights once a month again.

I stuck around and partied with people. There was a lot of people there, lots of dancing, loud music, lots of exuberance. Lots of drinking. As things started winding down, someone (she?) gave me a video or a dvd. Some kind of media. Told me to watch it.

It was the story of her life.

In the movie, Meopta was a young woman in the 70s who was seperating from her husband because he spent all their money on stuff. Useless stuff. She wore daisy duckes and a tank top (they lived someplace hot) and had long beautiful dark brown hair in a pony tail. Oddly, it had a heart shape cut out of it, at the bottom. She had kind of county-western hair, where it was kind of tall, and then a thick pony tail. She was very pretty and was a full time mom to her two sons and daughter (IRL she has 2 daughters). So she kicked her husband out and had to get a job and had no money. Her husband wound up keeping the house I think?

She wound up moving with her kids to Louisiana where they lived on a hill. There was a retaining wall and then a hill on top of it, and the building that was there shifted in the dream, from being one of those old long apartment buildings with a center courtyard to being a single family home. Anyway, she had a rotary lawn mower and one of her sons would mow the grass by standing on the mower and it would chrrrr down the hill until he jumped off of it, stopped it, and dragged it back up the hill. They lived in the poor part of town, but were together and she was doing ok.

At one point she and her husband get into contact again and she has difficulty saying some phrase to him (I forget what it is) and frets about that until she realizes that she can’t say it because it isn’t true (it’s like “nice to see you again” or “hope things are going well” or something positive and polite) and is all “fuck him, he’s an ass!”.

The movie kind of ended around there and I wanted to see more, but Meopta told me that this was only a pilot or test or something and all the actors were unpaid volunteers. They were really good, though. I wanted to see more of the movie, really badly.

I think there was more to the dream, but I’ve forgotten it.

Writing this makes me think of two things: one, seeing a photo of my friend Mike’s mom. I know her, she’s a nice lady, but is very very mom-like. The photo was of when he was a baby or toddler, and she was wearing short shorts and a tank top. She looked really great, fresh and young and alive, and it was weird to see her life before the life I knew. The other thing I thought of is that my mom used to (maybe still does) carry a photo of herself around in her wallet. She’s wearing pretty short shorts and a shirt and her hair is long. I asked her why she carried it around, and she answered that it was because she was thin and pretty in the photo. I’ve always thought my mom was (and still is!) very beautiful, and she’s been chasing the thin version of herself almost all her life. Her actions puzzled me at the time (I was a kid). I hadn’t thought about it in years, but now it depresses me. I guess it’s kind of weird that when I dream about a woman in short shorts, I then think about moms. Heh.

ETA

By the way, Meopta is doing a charity walk for cancer. You can donate here. Please toss a couple bucks her way.

We have the following for sale:

A totally rad and sturdy wooden framed futon with black mattress ($75)

An exercise bicycle (schwinn) with manuals ($50)

HEPA vacuum (kind of loud, bagless) ($50)

VCR, totally works, has remote and cables ($10)

DVD storage unit, low, light colored “wood” (pressboard), good for DVDs, video games, paperbacks ($25)

Book case, dark wood, heavy, solid, sturdy, awesome. ($50)

Computer desk, big, bits of it pull out ($10)

Drafting table, white, has black holder thingies on the side, top raises up and down ($50)

Heavy metal hand weights! Not sure the weights… 5 pounds and ten pounds? And some giant heavy ones? ($25)

Grey tv stand, coffee-table height, fits nicely into corners ($25)

3 Giant tupperware tubs, good for storing out of season clothing or Christmas decorations or dead hookers ($15 each)

I’ll post photos of this stuff later on. Leave a comment or email me if you’re interested in any of this.

I couldn’t find a permanent link to the strip, but today’s PvP looks really great. The backgrounds are fantastic and don’t detract from the content, while also really giving a clue as to what’s going on/the characters’ personalities. I love the paper pinned to the wall in Cole’s office, and his printer being right there. It’s so cool that there’s a guitar in the background in Brent and Jade’s hotel room, and the suitcase looks like Kurtz really drew on source material. Cole’s body language is just about perfect in the first panel.

It’s a bunch of little things, but this is what a professional-looking webcomic looks like. Kurtz has been pushing his artistic envelope for awhile and it really shows… in a good way. Marcy and Francis’s character redesigns are really good, too and Jade’s been looking slightly updated as well.

I haven’t done an Awesome Webcomic of the Week in a while in part because a bunch of the comics I want to comment on either don’t have enough of an archive yet or else are on hiatus. I’ve been trying to stay away from reviewing the big guns like PvP, Achewood, ScaryGoRound, etc because pretty much everyone knows about them, right? But I might work up an article on Kurtz’s stylistic changes and recent storylines.

I’m up with truly terrible heartburn. Ugh. I forgot to take my prescription medication for several days and even though I took it yesterday and today, apparently a dinner of… uh… pasta is too much for my tender tummy. Or something. I took some OTC stuff in addition to the prescription things and it’s starting to die down, but sitting up really helped so I surfed the net a bit and BAM! Awesome PvP action.