Category Archives: outrage

Right. I have HAD IT.

You know what we had today? SNOW FLURRIES.

You know what the forecast for this coming week is? SHITTY.

You know how much I want to flee this godforsaken state right now? NO. NO, YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE.

Can I PLEEEEEZ win the lottery so I can get the fuck OUTTA here already? It. Is. Almost. May.

WARM. THE FUCK. UP.

(Okay, my caps lock is off.)

Quote of the Day

Twisty again. Because I just can’t help it:

I’m gonna start calling myself an evangelical pro-life Republican. I’ll go on talk shows and say, “Well, Rush, the mistake made by the *old* evangelical pro-life Republicans was that they relied for their ideas on a 2000 year old novel written by misogynist barbarians. The *new* evangelical pro-life Republican says that if you want to spend your free time appeasing an invisible racist celestial ghost, go right ahead, fool, but put a sock in it in the public arena. Also, we now assert that scientific method is an excellent way to ascertain facts. Also, we now assert that women and brown people are fully human. In fact, the new evangelical pro-life vision is the overthrow of the patriarchal order.”

See, now, THIS is the stuff that makes me want to vote for her

I admit it: I’m already getting election fatigue. I honestly DO NOT CARE which of the top two democratic candidates gets the nod. Really! I will be all too happy to vote for either one of them! I’m just so tired of the campaigning and trying to keep track of who’s gone more stupidly negative this week. I really don’t know what I’ll do come Tuesday. Flip a coin? Eeeny-meeny-miny-mo?

But I’ll tell you what, I’m just enough of a contrarian that reading stuff like this makes me want to vote for Hillary JUST TO SHOW THEM. A sampling of some of the slogans available on everything from bumper stickers to tee-shirts:

“Just vote for the bitch”
“Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife for president,”
“No Penis, No Problems”
“H08!”
“This Woman Scares Me”
“Anyone But Her ’08”
“Even Bill Doesn’t Want Me,”
“Stop Mad Cow,”
“Stop the Beast”
“Two fat thighs, two small breasts and a bunch of left wings.”
“Wanna See Hillary Run? Throw Rocks at Her!”
“I Wish Hillary Had Married O.J.”

Kind of makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?

Warning: Self-Indulgent Rant below

So I just called my doctor about getting back on Zoloft for a while. Specifically, until I’m done with my damn degree. Because, y’all: I have been FREAKING OUT about this whole thing. My three primary emotions about my dissertation are fear, anger, and resentment. Fear that I can’t do it, can’t complete it after all this time, fear that it will take too much out of me and I’ll be an empty shell, fear that I just suck too much or don’t care enough or lack the necessary skills/gumption/wherewithal to get the fucker done. And I’m not talking casual kind of “oh, dear” fear: I’m talking TERRIFIED. Like, sitting in front of my computer with my pulse racing, hoping and praying for ANYTHING to come up that I have to attend to so I don’t have to try and write. And forget about calls or emails with my advisor – those both send me practically into myocardial-infarction land.

That is not a functional state of mind, y’all.

And the anger, the anger is so consuming. Why didn’t I wait for a while between my MA and PhD to make sure this was the degree I wanted? Why didn’t I finish the dissertation during the YEAR back in 2000 when I had an extremely light teaching load and specific release time to write? (I went on Prozac that year, because of the stress.) Why didn’t I finish it before I got pregnant? Or before I had a kid? OR AT ANY OF THE MULTIPLE TIMES WHEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH EASIER??!!

Or there’s the resentment: I resent the time and energy this takes away from my family, I resent that I’m making all this effort for a degree that won’t actually prepare me for the kind of job I ultimately want to get, I resent that I *knowingly* chose an advisor with an extremely hands-off style, because I’m macho like that, and couldn’t admit to myself back then that I need a much more interventionist kind of advising. I resent being in a position where I have to accept all these huge favors from friends and family to help me get it done – not that there’s any doubt the offers are made sincerely and unconditionally, but I HATE being in a position where I need those offers! I resent that this whole process stresses me out to the point that I have to go on prescription anti-crazy meds, simply to function at an every-day level. And wear a mouth-guard when I sleep at night so I don’t grind my teeth down to splintered stubbs. I RESENT.

It’s funny how sitting in front of one’s computer and mentally chanting “I HATE this” over and over again doesn’t exactly produce a flowing literary style. Or much of anything, really, except the occasional fantasy of throwing said computer out one’s second-story window. So, you know, enough already. I mean, at some point it doesn’t matter that I picked the wrong degree or had multiple chances to finish earlier or that my advisor hasn’t been as supportive as I might have hoped. None of that is important. What’s important is, am I going to fish or cut bait? Shit or get off the pot? And I’ve decided that I’m going to fish. Or shit, whichever. (Hopefully the former is a more apt metaphor for the final product.) So, yeah, OK, it’s not on the top ten list of things I’d like to be doing this year. But fuck it. I decided to do it; I’m doing it. There is no “try,” motherfuckers.

It’s a good thing I’m hard-headed

You know how sometimes, when your mom has taken a whole week off from her extremely busy career to watch your kid just so you can have some dedicated writing time and jumpstart the massive revisions you need to do on your dissertation and you aren’t sleeping well because that’s how your stupid, self-defeating brain handles stress and when you sit down in front of your computer you have one of those sessions where you write four sentences and then delete them because they’re crap and then write four different sentences and then delete them because they’re also crap and that’s kind of the pattern of your day?

Yeah. That was yesterday. Kind of like beating your head against a brick wall. Today is going a little better.

Other things that might make you feel like you’re beating your head against a brick wall:

1. Harry Reid – who is, let’s remember, a Democrat – who’s been giving Repubbbs a total pass on anything they say they’re going to filibuster, has decided that his fellow Democrats don’t deserve the same treatment. WTF, Harry?

2. Did you know that Hillary Clinton is a CUNT? Isn’t that, like, the most hilarious observation you’ve ever heard, like, in your ENTIRE LIFE? Also brilliant? Christ. As Shakes says, personally, I’d consider it a compliment (if I didn’t know the source).

3. You know what’s even funnier than calling Clinton a cunt? Making fun of Heath Ledger for dying! Especially if you can do it while gay-bashing! Whoo, that’s hilarious.

This is why I love the internets

This photoset* is amazing. If you’ve ever had body image issues (so: if you’re alive) and most especially if you’ve ever been suspicious about those fucking BMI categories and even MORE especially if you haven’t been suspicious of them, you need to check this out.* (via Bitch, from whom I steal all my best stuff.)

*Note: if you view it as a slideshow, be sure to click the “i” in the center of the first photo so you can see the titles and captions.

Oh: and also – Read this, too.

Sigh.

She’s so right. (As usual.)

Oh, it’s not selling unsafe toys to American kids that’s so shameful. What’s fucking shameful is that we–and I include myself–only give a shit about the American kids whose rooms are stuffed to the gills with cheap-ass toys made in sweatshops in China, whose workers are often not much older than children and who not only handle the lead paint or other toxins that we don’t want our kids to have even minimal contact with, but do so for 12 hours or more a day, for a few cents per week, while living in cities where the air is polluted by the same industrial toxins that we’re suddenly so concerned about.

Gah. It cannot be denied. What’s to be done? I will say, all the toy recalls *have* made me rethink what I buy for the Hatchling, both for safety reasons and for the reasons Bitch cites above. I mean, hell, she already has more crap than she knows what to do with, and often her favorite toys are things like my measuring spoons or toilet paper tubes. And when I stop and think about it, I mean DUH, of course I’d rather buy her one or two really top notch toys than nine or ten shitty cheap ones. But then we get to Target, and her eyes light up at some plastic geegaw, and it’s only $5.99, and, and, and … And gross. Feh. I gotta stop that. Mass consumption on that scale is good for exactly nobody’s children. Next time we’re at the store I pledge to take the time to remember that what I’m buying affects more kids than just my own. Who’s with me?