Note: Viewing many of the bellow may require you to sign up with Care2. Please consider it either way, because Care2 is pretty freakin' awesome.
Stuff to Do
Help get women and elderly people in Malawi released from (illegal) imprisonment on witchcraft charges
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/witch
es-in-malawi39s-prisons/
Help get this journalist out of detention for daring to do his job.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/721/100/222/
KILL this law that essentially makes the assassination of abortion providers legal
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/427/025/852/
If you, like me, can't get to a real one, join a virtual march in support of Unions
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/activities/458?t=fp
Stuff to Read
Really Bad
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/16/proposes-zero-international-family-planning
Bad
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/02/15/Indiana_House_Approves_Marriage_Ban/
Yay For this Kid!
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/02/15/School_Drops_Queen_King_for_Inclusive_Titles/
Take That!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?_r=1&ref=us
Example of why I am constantly waffling between wanting to join the Peace Corps, Americoprs, and Teach for America after finishing school.
http://www.care2.com/causes/education/blog/a-chance-to-make-history-wendy-kopps-vision-of-education-reform-on-the-20th-anniversary-of-teach-for-america/
I have mixed feelings about the school changing their homecoming awards to be gender neutral. One the one hand, how awesome for this guy that not only was his real gender recognized but supported by his classmates! How awesome that he gets to go to homecoming and receive the title/award he was voted into! How freaking awesome that the school willingly changed it's policies to be less binary and cissexist once the problem was brought up!
On the other hand, they should've just let him go as Homecoming King. Making him adopt a gender neutral title is still rather un-gendering.
aaaaaaand this. Because it's a really cool project, and I want it to get funded so that I can buy one of these posters someday.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/novelposter/novelposter-the-writing-is-on-the-wall
Friday, February 18, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
New addition to my blogroll? I think yes!
So, I'm a self confessed and wholehearted pop culture geek.
Therefore, the existence of this blog makes me extremely happy, and I thought some of you might be interested in it to:
http://cartoonoveranalyzations.com/
Basically, the blog is a collection of essays and articles (mostly partial, with links to the full text included at the end of a post) about cartoons, animated movies, and the occasional video game. Not every post is phenomenal, but the good are very good, and the content overall is consistently interesting, and perspective opening.
So, happy reading, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Therefore, the existence of this blog makes me extremely happy, and I thought some of you might be interested in it to:
http://cartoonoveranalyzations.com/
Basically, the blog is a collection of essays and articles (mostly partial, with links to the full text included at the end of a post) about cartoons, animated movies, and the occasional video game. Not every post is phenomenal, but the good are very good, and the content overall is consistently interesting, and perspective opening.
So, happy reading, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Dear People,
Okay, I know it's a bit silly, it being Valentine's Day and all, but I just wanted to tell you that a love you.
No seriously. You, people, are nothing short of astonishingly, mind-bendingly awesome. In all senses of the word.
Don't ever forget it!
Love,
me
No seriously. You, people, are nothing short of astonishingly, mind-bendingly awesome. In all senses of the word.
Don't ever forget it!
Love,
me
Monday, February 7, 2011
Glitch - Prologue
It was hunger that finally drove her out. Pulled her slowly from the folds of the sleeping bag she’d cocooned herself in for the last 2 days. And thirst. She had never in her life been so thirsty. The pounding headache, the sore scratching in her throat and the heavy emptiness in her gut had grown steadily, perforated by hours of restless sleep.
When she woke the 5th (or 10th, or 2nd?) time it was sensation, peaked like lead and trapped animals, that forced her to abandon the warmth and safety of hiding. She zipped the bag open and half crawled out. It was damp, and cool in the underground room, and gray the gray light of early morning seeped through the barred windows. And the distorted, echoing ring of sirens, voices, more than usual, and closer. A far off rumble that might have been a car crash …or might have been…
Squares and dashes of gray-blue light patterned the stone floor. The room reeked the comfort of ink and gasoline, and cleaners.
Until the breeze stirred up the copper taint of blood.
She gagged, curled in against the nausea and the flood, eyes wired shut and hands over ears against the wave of realization that tried to come over her, to wash her away. There was no time for this.
With nothing in her stomach she soon caught her breathe, and rose shakily. Her uniform was stiff with sweat, and blood, and fuel and lubricant and coolant leaking from the wounds on her arms and shoulders. She needed a repair. Badly. But food and water would help that. She took a deep breath and began to pick her way across the room, over the remnants of smashed computers, dismantled printing presses, and piles of papers which would never be delivered now. She opened the door from the main press, it creaked inward to the stale air of the break room. Somehow, it had been left relatively untouched. The light still blinked on the refrigerator, the table and chairs were overturned, but intact.
Most of the food in the refrigerator was spoiled. No surprise. But there was water in the tap and T.V and canned vegetables and beans in the cupboard and she’d eaten three without tasting them before she realized the static in her ears wasn’t distortion from the street above, or the damaged circuits in her skull.
The radio still worked.
She nearly fell over herself in her scramble to find it, stuttering between the legs of a discarded chair, set the dials, chase around the room for a signal.
And when she found it, weak as it was
-riots in Union Square….police…coalition of protesting cyborgs, robots, and organics…Mr. Rapp CEO of…house ransacked –
Somewhere in the street above another rumble and shock, and a handful of what sounded like firecrackers.
She didn’t care that the tears streaming down her face were more than salt and water, burned her skin, or the way her racking, joyous sobs grated against machinery and bone coming un-knit.
They’d done it. They’d actually done it.
They’d won.
When she woke the 5th (or 10th, or 2nd?) time it was sensation, peaked like lead and trapped animals, that forced her to abandon the warmth and safety of hiding. She zipped the bag open and half crawled out. It was damp, and cool in the underground room, and gray the gray light of early morning seeped through the barred windows. And the distorted, echoing ring of sirens, voices, more than usual, and closer. A far off rumble that might have been a car crash …or might have been…
Squares and dashes of gray-blue light patterned the stone floor. The room reeked the comfort of ink and gasoline, and cleaners.
Until the breeze stirred up the copper taint of blood.
She gagged, curled in against the nausea and the flood, eyes wired shut and hands over ears against the wave of realization that tried to come over her, to wash her away. There was no time for this.
With nothing in her stomach she soon caught her breathe, and rose shakily. Her uniform was stiff with sweat, and blood, and fuel and lubricant and coolant leaking from the wounds on her arms and shoulders. She needed a repair. Badly. But food and water would help that. She took a deep breath and began to pick her way across the room, over the remnants of smashed computers, dismantled printing presses, and piles of papers which would never be delivered now. She opened the door from the main press, it creaked inward to the stale air of the break room. Somehow, it had been left relatively untouched. The light still blinked on the refrigerator, the table and chairs were overturned, but intact.
Most of the food in the refrigerator was spoiled. No surprise. But there was water in the tap and T.V and canned vegetables and beans in the cupboard and she’d eaten three without tasting them before she realized the static in her ears wasn’t distortion from the street above, or the damaged circuits in her skull.
The radio still worked.
She nearly fell over herself in her scramble to find it, stuttering between the legs of a discarded chair, set the dials, chase around the room for a signal.
And when she found it, weak as it was
-riots in Union Square….police…coalition of protesting cyborgs, robots, and organics…Mr. Rapp CEO of…house ransacked –
Somewhere in the street above another rumble and shock, and a handful of what sounded like firecrackers.
She didn’t care that the tears streaming down her face were more than salt and water, burned her skin, or the way her racking, joyous sobs grated against machinery and bone coming un-knit.
They’d done it. They’d actually done it.
They’d won.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Protect Life Act? I think Not.
I am angry.
No, I am fucking infuriated. I am so fucking infuriated I don't even have words to describe the sheer levels of fury and disgust I am currently experiencing.
So, basically, the so called "Protect Life Act" or bill HR 358 isn't just an attack on a woman's (especially poor, underprivileged woman's) right to choose, it's a blatant attack on the bodies and value of women. Period.
Or really, any pregnant person, or person with a uterus (obviously uterus does not equal woman)
Sponsored by the same people as HR 3, which until recently had everyone up-in-arms over the 'forcible rape' wording which would have, for insurance purposes, discounted roughly 70% of rapes, the much less publicized HR 358 basically says women's lives don't matter, and it's fine to just let them die.
Yeah, that's right. If this bill get's approved, hospitals who receive federal funding, but don't support abortion will not only be allowed to turn away women seeking emergency abortions where not aborting would kill the woman, with no legal repercussions, but they will not even be required to transfer her to a hospital that will treat her. Again, with no legal repercussions for simply allowing a treatable patient seeking treatment to die.
This is a huge departure from current emergency care legislation, which requires that all persons seeking emergency care, including life saving abortions, be treated. And if the hospital they come to first is unwilling or unable to provide treatment, the hospital is legally required as per the 1986 EMTALA law, to transfer them to a hospital that can.
The passing of HR 358 would completely undo that.
If the purpose of this act is to "protect life" then why aren't women's lives worth protecting?
Oh yeah, because anti-choice legislation is rarely if ever actually concerned with the well being of fetuses, it's concerned with hurting and in this case killing women.
Fuck.
If this pisses you off as much as it does me, here is a petition you can sign, to be delivered to congress on Tuesday, urging that such legislation be dutifully and swiftly shot down:
http://pol.moveon.org/wontgoback/?id=26019-18359320-S3puWPx&t=2
No, I am fucking infuriated. I am so fucking infuriated I don't even have words to describe the sheer levels of fury and disgust I am currently experiencing.
So, basically, the so called "Protect Life Act" or bill HR 358 isn't just an attack on a woman's (especially poor, underprivileged woman's) right to choose, it's a blatant attack on the bodies and value of women. Period.
Or really, any pregnant person, or person with a uterus (obviously uterus does not equal woman)
Sponsored by the same people as HR 3, which until recently had everyone up-in-arms over the 'forcible rape' wording which would have, for insurance purposes, discounted roughly 70% of rapes, the much less publicized HR 358 basically says women's lives don't matter, and it's fine to just let them die.
Yeah, that's right. If this bill get's approved, hospitals who receive federal funding, but don't support abortion will not only be allowed to turn away women seeking emergency abortions where not aborting would kill the woman, with no legal repercussions, but they will not even be required to transfer her to a hospital that will treat her. Again, with no legal repercussions for simply allowing a treatable patient seeking treatment to die.
This is a huge departure from current emergency care legislation, which requires that all persons seeking emergency care, including life saving abortions, be treated. And if the hospital they come to first is unwilling or unable to provide treatment, the hospital is legally required as per the 1986 EMTALA law, to transfer them to a hospital that can.
The passing of HR 358 would completely undo that.
If the purpose of this act is to "protect life" then why aren't women's lives worth protecting?
Oh yeah, because anti-choice legislation is rarely if ever actually concerned with the well being of fetuses, it's concerned with hurting and in this case killing women.
Fuck.
If this pisses you off as much as it does me, here is a petition you can sign, to be delivered to congress on Tuesday, urging that such legislation be dutifully and swiftly shot down:
http://pol.moveon.org/wontgoback/?id=26019-18359320-S3puWPx&t=2
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Holy Shit!
There's a Blog!
And you're looking at it. Whoah. Well, however you ended up here, thank you for stopping by!
So, here's a quick rundown of what all will be going on here:
1. The main purpose of this blog will be the uploading of bi-monthly installments of a serialized novel (in draft form, to be fair) tentatively entitled Glitch
2. Reviews of things I've read recently, mostly with a bent towards pop-scifi and pop-fantasy. Since I lack the mental wherewithal to provide legitimate, serious criticism of anything, these are likely to be done while slightly inebriated, and with the main intent to entertain =)
3. Because I'm incapable of keeping my opinions to myself, look for a fairly large number of updates regarding news events, politics, things that are wrong in the world, things that are good in the world, and things you can sign to make it better.
4. Sometimes I may even have a post about my personal life! Though that's rarely interesting enough to be worth it.
So, there you are, if that sounds at all interesting to you, do check back now and again ^^
For now, look at these baby animals!
And you're looking at it. Whoah. Well, however you ended up here, thank you for stopping by!
So, here's a quick rundown of what all will be going on here:
1. The main purpose of this blog will be the uploading of bi-monthly installments of a serialized novel (in draft form, to be fair) tentatively entitled Glitch
2. Reviews of things I've read recently, mostly with a bent towards pop-scifi and pop-fantasy. Since I lack the mental wherewithal to provide legitimate, serious criticism of anything, these are likely to be done while slightly inebriated, and with the main intent to entertain =)
3. Because I'm incapable of keeping my opinions to myself, look for a fairly large number of updates regarding news events, politics, things that are wrong in the world, things that are good in the world, and things you can sign to make it better.
4. Sometimes I may even have a post about my personal life! Though that's rarely interesting enough to be worth it.
So, there you are, if that sounds at all interesting to you, do check back now and again ^^
For now, look at these baby animals!
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