How We Do It, or Sometimes Shit Is Awful

It's funny. Sometimes you're in a discussion with someone and you wish for an example of something. You want a simple, effective way to help them understand what you're talking about - something you can relate to them with, so you can take it a step further and show them a perspective they otherwise probably wouldn't have noticed.

Sometimes you get an example and really don't fucking want it. Yesterday I was asked how I can deal with death and see life as anything other than pointless. Well, fucker, this is what you get.

This is my cat, Patsy (named for Joanna Lumley's character in Absolutely Fabulous). She's sixteen, and as I write this, she's dying. Her hind legs don't really work; she stopped eating yesterday, she can't drink water properly and she's losing her voice - which might be the most painful part of it for the rest of us. She was given to mimicking the tones of voice we use in greeting each other when one of us entered a room; it looked a lot like she was trying to communicate the way we did. Maybe she was. She's a fucking smart cat. Now she can't do that; she can barely make sounds.

We got Patsy from a shelter when I was thirteen, and she was three. She'd apparently had a bad life before that; beautiful as she was, someone had treated her so badly she almost panicked herself unconscious her first night in the house. Judicious application of cat treats was necessary to get her to come out from under the stereo (oddly, as soon as she came out, she picked up a pen in her mouth and carried it around with her for about half an hour, then never did anything of the kind again).

Now I'm twenty-six. She's sixteen, and fully half my life later she's finally over her fear of the vacuum cleaner...and I'm watching her body shut down over the course of a few days. There are people who'd call this pointless attachment to an animal. I would, quite honestly, be very fucking tempted to hit them in the face. Anyone who's owned and cared for an animal for any length of time can tell you that they very quickly become family, and seem to take on human traits. It's been posited that hanging around humans can affect some animals and raise their intelligence. Regardless of whether it's true, Patsy's the most stark example I've ever seen of why people might think so; she tries to talk to us, copies our intonation. I'm half-sure I heard her try a consonant once or twice. Her intelligence seemed almost comparable to ours, like a toddler who can't quite communicate; she very quickly became a well-loved part of the family. Watching her die is excruciating.

What I'm getting at here is that this is more or less how a materialist and anti-theist* like me reacts to every death of a loved one. The fact that she's a cat doesn't actually change much; the period of grieving is shorter as reality reasserts itself, but the thought of losing her, before the fact, is just as intensely emotive as losing anyone in my family.

What this has in common with a believer's view of losing a beloved pet is that neither I nor they believe that my cat is going to experience an afterlife. She will simply stop. Her clockwork's winding down, and she is going to die and that's it. Soon. Maybe tonight. Her body will become electrically inert, and begin to break down into its component molecules through decomposition. This is, give or take some greater or smaller knowledge of the biological processes involved, how - say - a Muslim or Jew or Christian in my position would also view the coming events. A Hindu or Buddhist, or someone of another faith that involves reincarnation, would have a slightly different view of things; for the three big monotheist groups, though, this works well enough as a comparison.

Where it differs, of course, is that this is exactly the same way I view a human's death. Same processes, with a lot more grieving for various reasons ranging from language and interaction (letting us get a lot more involved with humans than other species) to plain old human conceit making our brains tend to register other humans as more important. I've been told I'm a depressing person because of this; I've been told I shouldn't think such terrible, bleak things. I have had this said to me more than once, by people who really, honestly believed that if I didn't agree with them before my own death I would suffer until the end of time.

Next time someone tells you they'd be depressed without the idea of an afterlife, remember what faith they are; most versions of heaven involve a ringside gloater's seat for watching what happens in hell.

And next time someone mentions to you they think animals go to heaven, thank them from me for at least trying to help.


*Anti-theist, in the late Hitchens' definition: not only do I not believe that religious stories are true, but I think it would be bloody awful if they were.

Scouts Do Lead People Forward, After All

This is actually the most awesome thing I've heard about a kids' social activity in a long time: the Girl Scouts are allowing transgendered boys to join as girls. The second most awesome thing is that the usual bigots are losing their shit in exactly the ways you'd predict from something like this - I found out about this from the American Family Association, whose 'call to action' (read: 'oh no people are moving further from the 1950s and megachurches') email list I've hooked into for laughs.

The seven-year-old's name is Bobby Montoya, and she (biologically the kid's a boy, but identifies as a girl and frankly at that age there's no real difference) was initially rejected by the Girl Scouts of Colorado because of plumbing that won't be anyone's business for at least another eight or nine years:

“I said, ‘Well, what’s the big deal,'” Bobby’s mother, Felisha Archuleta, told KUSA. “She said, ‘It doesn’t matter how he looks. He has boy parts, and he can’t be in Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts don’t allow that [and] I don’t want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.'"

Hey, bureaucracy used as a thin veil over something that looks a fuck of a lot like pointless biological determinism. Who'd have thought? Only problem for this buttcloud is that the Girl Scouts as an organisation actually doesn't see it that way, and takes a much more accepting approach to the whole thing: the Girl Scouts of Colorado have released a statement saying that that's bull and the kid is welcome to join.

“We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout,” according to the statement.

“Our requests for support of transgender kids have grown, and Girl Scouts of Colorado is working to best support these children, their families and the volunteers who serve them," the statement continued. "In this case, an associate delivering our program was not aware of our approach. She contacted her supervisor, who immediately began working with the family to get the child involved and supported in Girl Scouts. We are accelerating our support systems and training so that we're better able to serve all girls, families and volunteers."

That troop leader had better be fucking grateful. The organisation's just covered their arse out of the goodness of their hearts, even if it was an honest mistake - for one thing, a troop leader in an organisation that looks after young children had BETTER know all the fuckin' rules. On the other hand, if it wasn't an accident, and the troop leader was actually discriminating against the kid based on their own ideas of biological determinism rather than following the Scouts' rules, then the Scouts had better give the motherfucker a long talking-to.

And as usual, there's some motherfucker who's declaring this to be dangerous. How dare children play together!

But others think the Girl Scouts should be more steadfast in its policies, letting boys be boys and girls be girls.

To cross that line “is child sexual abuse, the violation of children’s genetic reality aided by a society that is reverting back to the dark," said Judith A. Reisman, visiting professor of law at Liberty University School of Law. "If he has male parts, he is a male. The children in a given society always reflect its belief systems. Until the 1950s the Western world was built and run by adults largely clear about their sexuality and their beliefs. People used to ask which is stronger, nature or nurture. Now we are so 'smart' we don’t even know we have a nature.”

I love the fucking false equivalency there. Letting kids be kids means ignoring that they're doomed to have sinful sexual thoughts about other people when they grow up!

Fox News' Keith Ablow, a fucking retard in his own right and a self-proclaimed 'doctor' with no actual medical qualifications (with a history of this shit - when that transgendered dancer Chaz Bono was on Dancing With The Stars, Ablow compared being transgendered to anorexia and cutting off one's own legs) has weighed in on this too. Starting with "I know a lot of experts will disagree with me" - because they're experts after all, they know what they're talking about - called this "a form of abuse" and said it should be stopped until more data was available on what potential harm it could do (because, y'know, there are ways to gather data on things without observation of their effects. Rush Limbaugh's never looked at something before complaining about it in his life).

“On the face of it, it seems to be expecting far too much psychologically of young girls to ignore the anatomy of a boy and act as though he is a girl," Ablow said. "The girls are just developing comfort with their own bodies, after all.”

How fucking loony is this man? He thinks these seven-year-olds won't be able to play together because THE GIRLS WON'T BE ABLE TO STOP THINKING ABOUT THE BOY'S PENIS. Because even that early in life, as far as Ablow's concerned, that's all women should focus on.

Loving The Money-Changers

Jesus was one of the 1%. Who knew?

With a hat-tip to the inimitable Hugh Kramer, I come with news that Bryan Fischer has declared that Jesus would attack Occupy Wall Street protesters. What the FUCK.

That's not big enough. WHAT THE FUCK.

Jesus would side with the rich and privileged and powerful over "the least of these", would he, you crazy old bastard? Son of a bitch. I don't say this very often, the most recent example was Jerry Falwell - but I hate this piece of shit and I can't wait until he fucking dies. He can sit there and write this epic Christian Taliban buttclump:

A CNN anchor asked earlier this week whether or not Jesus would occupy Wall Street.
That question can be answered with a categorical “No.”
First, Jesus has no truck with rank, blatant hypocrites*. The OWS crowd has now fallen to squabbling over who gets a slice of the $500,000 which has been donated to them, and which, by the way, they put in one of the evil, greedy banks they are out to destroy.

I love that. That's some quality fucking logic reversal there. It's not that OWS is made up of people sick of Wall Street being staffed by people so obscenely wealthy and greedy we can't call them robber barons because barons aren't rich enough. It's that the peasants are greedy! How dare they want to be able to eat and pay their bills in the same month!

Secondly, Jesus has no truck with those whose entire agenda is to flagrantly disobey two of the Ten Commandments of God.

God said, “Thou shalt not steal,” a commandment Jesus affirmed on numerous occasions. Stealing is wrong, and it doesn’t make it right when government does it under color of law.

Hoh-lee shit. Really, Fischer? Really? You couldn't say that to Bush, who (A) actually fucking stole under the guise of government, and (B) might've been fucking stupid enough to listen to you, and maybe stopped this shit from happening in the first place?

And the OWS crowd is animated by a thoroughly ugly disregard for the 10th Commandment as well. God says, “Thou shalt not covet...any thing that is thy neighbor’s.” And yet the Occupiers are driven by a dark, bitter, resentful, angry and acquisitive greed for stuff that belongs to other people.

I submit that no political program that is predicated on a violation of twenty percent of God’s moral law can possibly be right, can possibly work, or can possibly be good for America.

I submit that any per cent of your god's law, enshrined into the law of the land solely because you think your god said it, can never, ever be good for any nation. Especially the tenth commandment, which legislates against nasty thoughts and is thus both totally unenforceable and completely against nature. You prick.

And again, Fischer rails against hypocrisy and then turns around in the same fucking article and bludgeons his own point to death. OWS are greedy? Really? That's why they're protesting Wall Street's massive greed and acquisitiveness that drives the 1% to gather literally pointless amounts of money until their bank accounts are so huge they would take longer than a human lifetime to spend? It's that the 99% are greedy for wanting a big enough account that they can afford to take their children to hospital since you and yours declared free healthcare was an abomination in the eyes of your god?


Fuck you, Bryan Fischer. You're a gigantic piece of shit, and I'll be glad when you're fucking dead.


*Well, shit, now I need a new irony meter again. Until Karl Rove finally succumbs to whatever disease makes his head that shape, we won't have the raw materials to make one strong enough to withstand Fischer.

So Fucking Sick Of This Shit

It's time for an alternate viewpoint on this. 9/11 happened ten years ago. And what too few people seem to realise is that the terrorists have won.

Michael Moore was fucking right. Okay, yeah, he sounded preachy as hell about it, and everyone got a big laugh out of it ha ha look at the sanctimonious liberal okay time for some fat jokes FUCK YOU. He was right and he was lambasted for being right, in a time when the people who needed an excuse - and found that 9/11 fit the bill nicely - really wanted as few people as possible to catch on to what the fuck they were doing. Moore had it spot-on when Iraq was first invaded, sparking the second of two wars that have each dwarfed 9/11 on their own in terms of civilian casualties, in Dude, Where's My Country: 'Hey, let's dismantle our way of life so the terrorists can't blow it up!'

What was the biggest meme the bastards spread about Al Qaeda? 'They hate us for our freedoms!' What fucking freedoms? There aren't any left. America has become a place where mosques are vandalised just for not being Christian places of worship and innocent people are attacked - potentially fatally - for being Muslim, thanks to the shaved-monkey touchiness with which the US Christian establishment has succeeded in saturating the nation's congregation.

Islam has become the new Communism, the latest bogeyman, and no one with a vested interest has lost any time in turning anyone swarthy-looking into a target of suspicion and paranoia. The very word 'Islamofascist' was coined as a club for bludgeoning the American populace about the head until the nation's behaviour, seen from the rest of the world's viewpoint, closer resembles that of a chicken than a human being - convinced the world is coming to an end one minute, busily consuming as much as it can the next, and eagerly closing the barn door to shut itself in rather than deal with the rest of the world in a rational manner - sacrificing what used to be seen as essential human liberty for the mere illusion of greater safety.

And it's going to keep getting worse. Brian Kane has put a great phrase to it:

It’s time to give it over to history once and for all. There’s no question that the aftermath has long since overshadowed the tragedy itself. It is the aftermath that has reshaped the world in its twisted and destructive grasp. We’ve long ago stopped even pretending to be interested in the lives lost and lives disrupted. The power elite found every possible avenue of exploitation — political, economic, social — and have ruined anything and everything in their efforts to wring every last ounce of worth from them. And with the reality wiped away by the iconography and ideology, we can safely let it go. The whirlwind it created is now permanently self-sustaining without it.

It should be let go. It won't.

It will be kept going, the fear will be kept in the background of every news report possible (as well as almost every Fox News broadcast, pretending as they do to be an actual news service), the wars will be carried on until there's nothing further to be squeezed from the nation, and then the serfs will be given something else to be worried about. More than anything else for the past thirty years, 9/11 has been a supremely fortunate windfall for those who envision America as an aristocracy, who look at the country's middle class the way locusts look at fields of wheat, who can and will do anything possible to get away with taxing the living fuck out of anyone but the rich. Bush and the GOP senate were able to strong-arm a lot of their deregulation fantasies through, with almost no resistance, and loot the treasury in an orgy of war profiteering. Without 9/11 it would have taken another decade to achieve all this.

Meanwhile, the fundamentalists of both Islam and Christianity get what they want - a polarised, us-versus-them worldview spoonfed to every believer they can reach, each faith's leaders painting the other as controlled by , if not embodying, supernatural forces of evil. And everyone else, from the sane believers to the tired, angry idealist nonbelievers, gets a little bit more fucking sick of this shit.

I'm not a homosexual? (NSFW)

Reading about some insane shit that Michele Bachmann has said just reminded me about what a neuropsychologist said about me.

In a very long and detailed report, he basically summed me up as "Shy, manic depressed, suffers from ADHD, and while she says she's attracted to women, she isn't."

Sure, I'm not attracted to women in a normal way. I love women's bodies, I want to caress their breasts, to hold them tight against me, to kiss them tenderly, and to fuck them hard with my dick.

... wait a minute...

Yeah, I secretly want to bone women. That's how I am attracted to them. As for men, I want to bone them too, but I love the fact that my boyfriend can take me in a heterosexual manner. It's a weird feeling. I love being a woman, so I'm not transexual. I might be a transvestite though. Which is alright by Mick because I get to keep my vagina. And that's alright by me too. Even though my dream self keeps giving me dicks, I actually like being a woman.

And I like being in a heterosexual relationship with my man.

But sometimes I am reminded that I'm bisexual.

Now, I know that this blog isn't all about me. So I'm going to stop talking about me and talk about other people.

Like this neuro doctor, who spent 10 minutes talking with me, then shoved me in a small room to do a series of tests, and then decided he knew all about me (they were pretty good tests though.), there are multiple others who believe that being gay isn't the fault of the person.

But it is a fault and has a cure.

What is the cure you might ask? Why it's simple. Just pray the gay away.

You simply join a ministry, abstain from sex, and if you're a tranny you throw away the clothes that you feel good about wearing but isn't considered normal for the gender you were born in. Then you go to church, confess every sin, pray every day, read the bible, get a good job, date a few members of the opposite sex, and then just hate yourself because you're still sexually attracted to members of the same sex.

This has actually led to suicides.

Now, I'm not saying that being a Christian means that you have to be straight as an arrow. After all, I'm bisexual. In fact, I have met ministers and members of churches who believed that the bible doesn't come out and state that being gay is sinful. My boyfriend may speak differently, but if you take all of the bible and follow every single law to the letter, then my mother would still be married and not allowed to speak in church except through her husband, and I would be stoned to death at the door of my parents.

The bible is open to interpretation. And my interpretation is that all genders are equal, and all peoples of different faiths, cultures, and sexual orientation should be free to speak, free to live, free to worship (or not worship), free to learn, and, most importantly, free to love.

America wasn't founded on Christian beliefs, nor is it run on them like other countries are. America wasn't founded on hate or prejudice against others (even if some of the founding fathers were bigots, sexist, and racist... okay, all of them). And America wasn't born to hate.

But why are so many people saying that God should always stay in the pledge, as it always has; that all men, be they atheist, Muslim, Christian, or Buddhist should swear on the bible; that homosexuals should be killed or at the least they shouldn't be encouraged by marriage?

Well, let me tell you something.

The pledge of allegiance never contained the word "Under God" until the mid 1900s.

People swear on the bible because it is sacred to the individual, but for someone who doesn't believe in it, swearing on it is about as effective as swearing on a piece of toilet paper.

And one last thing.

Heterosexuals are the ones who have gay babies. ;p

I'm such a slut.

This utter bullshit.

I was randomly looking on one of my favorite websites (memebase), when I came across a picture of a boy carrying a sign that said "My mom is a slut", with the mom behind him. A link took me to a website that explained what it meant.

Slutwalk started in Toronto after a few women heard the Toronto police's stance on rape and sexual assault. The Toronto police pretty much said that any woman who is raped or assaulted or abused is a slut. It's her fault, she's wearing the wrong clothes, she's being too free, she's the one opening herself to rape so it's her fault.

You've probably heard this before as well. Society blames the victim. It always has. And sexual abuse and rape can go both ways. When it's done to a woman, if she isn't yelling bloody murder and trying to kill her rapist, then she's done it willingly. Even religions may give laws that insinuate the blame is also on the victim. But I won't get into that

Slutwalk took me to their facebook page where multiple people put up news pages, outraged at the contents. Above is one such news page.

If you didn't read it, it's about a special ed student, a female seventh grade studen, who reported that she was raped by a classmate. Not only did the school not file a report, but they punished her for making false accusations and forced her to write an appology letter. All this without telling police or parents. They sent her back to class, the same class that the rapist was in.

It was after this that he pulled her out to the library and raped her again. She was afraid of telling the school because they wouldn't believe her.

A rape kit was administered and the boy's semen tested positive. There was proof of rape. He even admitted that he was guilty of raping her.

And still the school does not even give an appology. They're being sued.

I've read stories from the Slut walk. So many women are told they are sluts, in a bad, a horrible way, because they like sex or they wear slutty clothing, or even because their bodies grew big boobs. It's a horrible word that makes the victim feel small. And when a girl is called a slut, boys and men might think that because she's easy, she'll have sex with them. She'll be forced to giving the men pleasure, and afterwards they hate her. Family members and friends are not always considerate, especially since most cases of sexual assault, abuse, and rape happen to a girl by someone they know.

"No, your uncle couldn't have done that! I know him, he's my brother!"

It's so different when you look on the outside. But you can never truly know someone. They don't show you the same face they'll show their coworkers or their spouse.

Some women can't even file a police report because even though their husbands have been yelling at them and making them feel like shit, cornering them and telling them that they will rape them, the husbands never touched them. It was the woman who hit them first.

Some people can't file rape because they say yes for their own safety.

Some people can't file rape because they were so stoned they couldn't even talk.



I'll make it simple. If you let the person that you never wanted sex, and they put you in a situation where you were forced to say yes, then that is rape. Even if you didn't yell or fight back, it's rape.

Be strong. Don't let people judge you for what clothes you wear or how sexual you want to be. It is never your fault. Men won't pick and choose based on clothing or how a woman carries herself. He would have taken you even if you were just wearing sweat pants instead of that miniskirt.

Be proud of who you are. If you love sex, don't let others words hurt you. Sex is a natural part of life and is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Just because some people take it and abuse it and turn it into some horrible nightmare, that doesn't mean that you did anything wrong.

Wear revealing clothing. Blush and laugh about the sexual adventures you enjoyed. Live freely, love freely.

Women have the right to be as sexual as they want. They have the right to say no and to be free of sexual abuse. And for those uncounted men who also are raped and abused, and for those who are finding their place in their sexual and gender identities, be brave and fight for who you are and who you love.

Everyone should have the right to a life without rape.

Fuck Zimbabwe

Okay. I've been on my own again for nearly two weeks, and I'm good and pissed now. So here we go.

I know it's entirely possible someone from Zimbabwe will read this. I'm actually fine with that possibility, because it means they'll have this pointed out to them in a way that Mugabe shithead won't be able to cushion.

The company that runs the mine is headed by a personal friend of President Mugabe. A second camp is located in nearby Muchena
"It is the place of torture where sometimes miners are unable to walk on account of the beatings," a victim who was released from the main camp in February told the BBC.
All the released prisoners the BBC spoke to requested anonymity.
"They beat us 40 whips in the morning, 40 in the afternoon and 40 in the evening," said the man, who still could not use one of his arms after the beatings and could barely walk.
"They used logs to beat me here, under my feet, as I lay on the ground. They also used stones to beat my ankles."
He and other former captives said men are held in the camp for several days at a time, before new prisoners come in.
Women are released more quickly, often after being raped, witnesses said.

Is there anyone, anywhere in the world, with a healthy psyche, to whom this wouldn't appear obscene?

There's only so much a population can take. And if - when - Zimbabwe finally gets tired of this ancient, spiteful, malicious, corrupt, lying, delusional, power-mad, self-aggrandised, bigoted, horribly abusive old despot...then it'll be bloody. He'll fight them with everything he's got. But he can't kill all of them. And they'll tear him apart. Or if he dies first, then whichever crony replaces him. The populace will murder him, and a lot of people will die. All we'll be able to do from outside is pick up the pieces...however few there are.

Looking at this shitpile, I'm very tempted to hope they get it over with soon. At least he won't poison them any more.