There are times when I think I’m missing something by not getting involved in one fandom or another, and then there are times when I read fandom_wank over on JournalFen and I come away feeling like I dodged an atomic bomb of crazies.
I can understand being passionate about a book, movie, or television series to the point that you want to learn every little thing about its canon that you can. Related to that, I completely understand why some people enjoy reading and/or writing fanfiction; I’m guilty of it myself. However, if you’re obssessive to the point that you start losing your grip on reality, or your perspective gets so out of whack that you’ll start a flamewar over the original creator’s interpretation of a character, maybe it’s time to leave fandom and take a walk outside.
Call me crazy, but insisting that Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are totes gay for each other (No, really, they are!), and going so far as to suggest there’s a massive conspiracy by CW executives (you know, that network made up of the combined fail of UPN and the WB) to keep their love hidden from the public, might be inidcative of a much larger personal issue, and by “much larger personal issue” I mean to say, “You are batshit insane.” Furthermore, going so far as to psychoanalyze characters from a children’s novel might be a sign that it’s time to put down the books, turn off the computer, and find a nice comfy couch to lie on while you tell a strange Austrian man with a beard about your mother.
So, while I am a fan of many a book and television series, I think I’ll keep to the sidelines when it comes to fandom. I applaud those of you who can wade through the bullshit to find the fun I know is out there, but I’m just not that cool.
A new Oklahoma law will require the details of every abortion to be posted on a public website. Proponents say this will prevent abortion — apparently by shaming and burdening women and doctors.
The law (which you can look at here — it’s HR 1595) mandates that a 34-item questionnaire be filled out by abortion providers for each procedure. The questionnaire doesn’t include the woman’s name or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” but it does ask for age, race, level of education, marital status, number of previous pregnancies, and the county in which the abortion was performed, information which opponents of the bill argue would be enough to identify a woman in a small town. The questionnaire also asks about the mother’s reason for the abortion, her method of payment, and even what type of insurance she has, as well as whether the fetus received anaesthetic and whether there was “an infant born alive as a result of the abortion.” [Emphasis Mine]
You know, my town isn’t technically all that small (roughly 5,000 people), however, there are plenty of people who know more about me than they should. If they know I’m dating (and they do; thanks, Mom), if they had access to a website like this, it might not be hard for them to figure out who may or may not have had an abortion. Even if they were wrong, the rumors would fly and that can make life all that much harder for a person.
It puzzles me that women are infantalized so much. We’re adults and yet the right to decide what can or can’t happen with our bodies is taken away from us because some of us possess a uterus. A theoretical baby is more important than our careers, our livelihood, our ability to care for a child, and in some cases, even more important than our lives. Hell, for a few people it doesn’t even matter if the act that caused the pregnancy was or was not consensual (see South Dakota’s 2006 attempt at a no-exceptions abortion law). The moment sperm meets egg our bodies become someone else’s property – usually old white men who then get to decide our fate. Control, control, control.
I suppose the good news in this case is that the law may not stand a chance.
Luckily, the bill’s very broadness may be its downfall. The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging it on the ground that it violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it “covers more than one subject” — a challenge that previously worked to strike down an abortion ultrasound law. Harris appeared sanguine about the Center’s chances for getting the law struck down, which is lucky, because otherwise the women of Oklahoma will become data points in a system designed to advance an ideological goal.
Somehow that doesn’t make me feel like I’ll sleep any easier. The very fact that such a law even exists sends shivers down my spine.
Note: This is a pro-choice blog. I will not argue over whether or not abortion is morally right or wrong, nor will I say one reason for an abortion is better than another. This is not what any of this is about. The bottom line is a woman should have access to legal and safe abortions, and it is none of my business why a woman is seeking an abortion. This is a matter that should only be discussed between a woman and her doctor.
Somewhere on LJ they were talking about guilty pleasures today, and I thought that it would be an excellent subject for a post here. Granted, I may never be able to show my face around here again after this, but it’s still a nice subject. I think for simplicity’s sake, and to keep me from going all over the map, I’ll break down the guilty pleasures by type.
Music
I’m just going to come right out and say what I love with a YouTube video. In fact, I do believe this is the video that got me hooked.
Yes, I love HIM, and no, I can’t explain it. My boyfriend (lovingly) teases me about this, but not so much any longer since I discovered Avril Lavigne on his external harddrive when I went in search of new music for myself.* Maybe part of it is that Ville (the lead singer) makes for great eye candy, but that doesn’t explain why I will occasionally rock out to HIM while driving in my truck or sitting in my computer chair sans any sort of visual media. I can’t even say the lyrics to most of the songs are particularly amazing or profound, but yet I can’t stop listening and HIM is one of only a very small number of bands whose CDs I will buy without hesitation.
What can I say? I’ve got an inner emokid who can’t cut herself free. (See what I did there?) Yes, I do listen to Linkin Park and still enjoy it. I don’t have any of their work post-Meteora, but I probably will be catching up at some point soon. I just have to find a music store I won’t mind never going into again, and I’ll have to hide it from my boyfriend to prevent more teasing (not even Avril can save me when it comes to Linkin Park).
Books
I was going to categorize this section as “literature,” but I don’t want to offend anyone by calling the books I love “great literature.”
I may as well and admit it: I love Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series. There, I said it. Yes, I know she is rightfully planned in many circles, and the more recent books’ grammar have been so bad that even I can spot what’s wrong, but I fell in love with the smut story and couldn’t put them down. I do plan to pick up the Anita Blake series again, and I will read until it gets too bad to handle because I am just that much of a masochist.
Yet another series I enjoy are Keri Arthur’s Riley Jensen novels. I believe the books are classified as paranormal romance, but to be honest the romance takes a back seat to a bad-ass werewolf/vampire heroine who works for a futuristic Australian government agency that handles non-human criminals. There’s werwolves, vampires, various types of shifters, and all sorts things that go bump in the night. And yes, there’s smut, though as the series progesses there’s more plot and less smut, which is fine by me because you can get carried away with too much smut (I’m looking at you, Hamilton). I can’t do the books justice here, but I will say that if you dig vampires and werewolves, give these books a try. Yes, they can get pretty cheesy, but they’re short reads and can provide a weekend’s worth of entertainment. That’s my excuse at least.
I bet you’re waiting for me to say Twilight. Well, I actually have read Twilight and you couldn’t pay me to read the other three books. It was awful. Sure, I’m not a tween-aged girl anymore, but I’d like to think even back then I’d have found sparkly vampires rather ludicrous. See, there may be hope for me after all.
There’s other sorts of guilty pleasures I want to touch on, but I was constantly interrupted while writing this and lost steam. It’s hard to stay focused when I have to get up every two minutes to tend to a five year-old’s needs, a puppy’s desire to be let in or out, and a cat’s demands to be petted. I know this entry was rather blah, but the only way I’ll get better is if I keep writing every day and keep posting.
Anyway, what are your guilty pleasures?
* = To his credit, he did request that I delete the album, and he said that he had no idea it was on there. Mmhmm, sure.
Today was a rainy day. Ordinarily I love a good rain storm, but today was just dreary and completely dull. It drizzled all day long, and everything was cast in shades of gray; the sort of weather that makes you feel drab and icky because everything is wet and yucky. At least lightning and thunder are very, very frightening exciting, and the rain pounds against the roof and windows providing a lovely background noise for curling up with a good book or working a crossword puzzle. Alas, I was stuck with the icky drab rain instead, and it especially stunk because I had plans to Do Stuff. In fact, had it not rained today and prevented me from doing various outdoor activities such as cleaning out my truck, I might never have overhauled this blog and started over from scratch. Oh, okay, even if it were bright and sunny, I still wouldn’t have cleaned out my truck, but I did think about it.
The rain also prevented my five year-old from going to soccer practice, and I slipped up and said “No soccer practice today” before explaining that it was raining. I then had to spend a couple of minutes explaining that no, he was not being punished, and that yes, I know he had a good day at school (complete with a smiley face!), but it’s a bad idea for children to practice in the rain, especially when the weather is getting colder. Communicating this important information is hampered by the fact my son has expressive language disorder* which means while he can understand 99.9% of what I say, he can’t always talk in a way I can understand. Eventually he understood, though I think he still suspects I had something to do with the weather. I never read the Mom Manual, so I might indeed have that super power, but I lost it years ago. The manual, not my mind, though that’s a close call.
Of course, the rain didn’t spoil everyone’s fun. Sasha the puppy, who at only nine months of age is now bigger than the five-year old dog Penny, was able to play a new game called “Holy crap it’s raining! Let me back in!” This game involves barking at me until I finally give in and let her go outside only to have her get soaked with rain, come back to the door, and beg to be let back in. Lather, rinse, repeat. This game is very similar to the strictly-indoor cat Prissy’s game of “Holy crap I’m outside! Let me back in before the grass eats me!” which is played by slipping between my legs when I’m either coming in with an armload of groceries or I’m letting the dogs in to/out of the house. The other dog, Penny, played a game of “Can’t I just use the bathroom in the house? The cat does it all the time.” She can’t stand for there to be even a remote possibility that drop of water will land on her delicate fur; however, I can’t stand to clean up poop off my recently steam cleaned carpet even more, so she must suffer the horrible torture of squatting over the damp grass to do her business. (I suppose it’s bad news for the environment that I let out many exasperated sighs today. I think I went over my daily alottment of CO2 emissions.)
Anyway, I realized today I had this WordPress account sitting around doing nothing. I had started it in 2008 right before my late father was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, but I was taking a different approach then. I decided to delete what few entries I had and start over. Clean slate and all that. I’m not sure what sort of things I’ll post about, but I do know this blog will not be easily classified as one thing or another. Sometimes I rant, other times I brag about my son, and still other times I make silly posts about my pets. Some of what I post I might also put on my LiveJournal, but I’m going to try to keep the two separated somehow. If you like what you read, leave a comment and maybe a link to your own blog/journal (if you have one). Check out my Twitter while you’re at it. And if you find my life interesting, you might need to up the excitement in your life by a whole lot.
* = A simple way of saying this is to say that my son has a speech delay. He can talk, and he has an incredible vocabularly and follows instructions very well, but he is obviously stunted when it comes to actual communication. He also has developmental coordination disorder, though his gross motor skills are great, his fine motor skills (i.e. holding a pencil) need help. Sometimes this leads people to mistakenly think my kid is “slow” or “stupid” when the truth is he’s incredibly bright, sometimes frighteningly so. He’s in his third year of speech therapy, and soon he’ll be starting Occupational Therapy to aid with his pencil grip and other motor skills. His lack of speech has not hampered him in any way in school, and so far he’s even managed to shock me with how much knowledge he has crammed into that noggin of his.
