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November 29, 2004
Run run run run, make a bag or two
My mantra of survival at the moment is: "it's only temporary." Things are busy, so busy that I'm starting to get that cracked-around-the-edges, what-am-I-missing feeling. It's undoubtedly something big, but it will have to wait until January 14, 2005, which is the next obligation-free weekend I face. By way of explaining why this blog is now and will continue to be so neglected and boring, here's what's happening between now and then:
Dec. 4-5: attend craft fair in NH.
Dec. 9: attend craft fair in Boston.
Dec. 11: attend craft fair in Maine.
Dec. 12: attend craft fair in Haverhill.
Dec. 17: visit The Dad, help him send his Christmas cards.
Dec. 24-26: visit NH and NY for three to four separate Christmas celebrations.
Dec. 30-Jan 2: visit Josh's mom in Vermont, see her perform at First Night.
Jan. 7: visit The Dad.
In between now and all those things, I need to: finish making stockings, upholstery bags, and wristbands; prepare various other fiddly fair-related things; do Christmas shopping; bitch out/talk to the nursing home regarding The Poop Problem (seriously don't even ask, just shoot me); get Change for a Five up in its preliminary state before all the momentum is lost if it has not been already; pay my bills and my dad's bills; help my workplace prepare for their own craft fair, which I will not be able to actually attend; create special consultation report for work; work extra holiday hours in the store for work; remain clothed bathed and fed; sleep. I have a feeling that the last will be the first to go.
But let's not worry too much about all that. January 14, 2005, man. That's where it's at. Get the clean sheets ready and the cocktails mixed, because I'll be kicking back like you've never seen.
Posted by hilatron at 12:50 PM | Comments (3)
November 26, 2004
This is what happens, jackasses.
Congratulations on your new gay marriage ban, Utah! I bet you feel so much better now that you've enacted legislation that would keep The Gay safely marginalized, while ensuring that life for heteros would continue just as before...
Salt Lake attorney Mary Corporon recently filed a motion for a male client who contends that Amendment 3 makes it unconstitutional to enforce a court protective order that his former live-in girlfriend got from a judge.
...oops.
I hate to, uh, preach at you, but this is what happens when you start mucking around with laws for poorly articulated and dishonest purposes. And the people who pushed for these amendments in the first place? The ones who wrote the bills and campaigned for them and figured out how to make them palatable to the majority of voters? They don't give a shit about a live-in girlfriend; she's next on the list, along with people who want divorces, those in secular marriages, single moms seeking child support, and the rest of us who don't fit an ever-more narrow definition of marriage. So thanks for helping intolerance get its foot further in the door, fuckwits! I'm sure that each and every one of you will enjoy the results.
Posted by hilatron at 11:48 PM | Comments (2)
November 23, 2004
How Five People Learned to Make Your Kids Ignorant and Give Them Herpes
Seriously, things like this article are going to give me an ulcer:
Texas is the second-largest buyer of textbooks in the nation, after California. Books purchased here wind up in classrooms across the nation, because publishers are loath to create new editions for smaller states.As a result, five social conservatives on the 15-member Texas board, frequently joined by five more moderate Republicans, have enormous clout — and often control the content used to teach millions of children.
...
Conservatives' efforts over the years to edit textbooks are legendary here. In a nod to those who believe God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, a sentence saying the ice age took place "millions of years ago" was changed to "in the distant past." Descriptions of environmentalism have been attacked as antithetical to free-enterprise ideals; a passage describing the cruelty of slavery was derided as "overkill."
Among the "five conservatives" mentioned is Terri Leo, whose most recent triumph was this campaign against health textbook publishers:
One agreed to define marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." Another deleted words that were attacked by conservatives as "stealth" references to gay relationships; "partners," for example, was changed to "husbands and wives." A passage explaining that adolescence brings the onset of "attraction to others" became "attraction to the opposite sex."
So what can we do about this? If this loony is going to listen to anyone, it's sure not going to be some bleeding heart like me from godless, liberal Massachusetts. But these people are effectively deciding what gets put in textbooks across the country! What to do? Maybe one thing is to make a donation to the Texas Freedom Network, a non-profit group working against this kind of bullshit. You could also write to your local school board and demand that the textbooks in your state or district contain actual facts; perhaps if enough states start demanding alternative books the small states can find strength in numbers and convince textbook publishers that it's worth it to do two editions.
Posted by hilatron at 09:38 AM | Comments (8)
November 17, 2004
Allies Step Forward!
More in the Five Buck Revolution vein: I direct your attention to This is Not Over, a political blog for people just like us.
When I first heard about TINO, I thought "hey, maybe we shouldn't muddy the waters with yet another 'get the liberals going' site." But I've thought about this a bit, and exchanged e-mails with one of the TINO participants, and decided to go ahead with Change for a Five anyway. I think that a group like TINO can actually take some of the burden off of us and allow us to focus more narrowly, and (perhaps) vice versa: we won't have to fulfill an obligation to cover the news, and can just work on getting people to commit to involvement. TINO looks like a great resource and I urge everyone to check there for current events goodness. Meanwhile, the comments section of the Five Buck Revolution entry is still open and hopping; please stop by for developments.
Posted by hilatron at 01:55 PM | Comments (1)
November 15, 2004
Experiments for the Workplace: Beginner Level
Today I am proud to present the first in a series of workshops presented by Blogatron Labs. My team of robot scientists* has been hard at work, refining the experiments that follow for clarity and ease of use by workers of any level. Stay tuned for future, more advanced installments.
"How many things can you hate about the co-worker who sits to your immediate left?"
In order to control costs, we recommend that you establish a time parameter for this experiment. Otherwise you may never know when you are done; just when you have finished thoroughly and cleverly hating the way that he sits down, rolling the chair backwards so that it smashes into the metal trash can with a teeth-grinding clang every. single. time, you will discover that what you really, really hate is the infernal throat-clearing. Ahem. For example.
"How far can you travel without leaving your desk chair?"
This one is self-explanatory, although we should note our complete failure to solve the staircase dilemma. If, like our team, you find yourself without access to hydraulics, we advise that you stick to flat surfaces.
"When will they notice that you have stopped [answering the phone]?"
Inspired by an attempt to avoid a pre-noon nervous breakdown, this experiment can be varied to accommodate any dreaded, mundane responsibility on your job description. The vital element here is to accurately gauge the Silent Grumble factor, where SG=the amount of time, on average, your co-workers will tolerate blatant incompetence while talking about it amongst themselves. The SG factor should be deducted from the total running time of the experiment, which is counted from initiation to the first mention of "Gosh, the phone has been ringing A LOT today, hasn't it, HILATRON?"
"How terse is too terse?"
Let's face it: what with surfing, pretending to work, keeping yourself awake on a Monday after successfully adjusting to a 3am bedtime on Friday and Saturday, and calculating how much of the color ink you can use for flyers before it gets missed, sometimes you just don't have enough free brain cells left for the social niceties, like saying hello and not scowling for eight hours straight and not threatening to bite people. This is a great opportunity for you to evaluate your subjects' willingness to tolerate anti-social behavior from an unexpected source. As the day progresses and your surliness grows ever more extreme, take note of facial expressions, verbal cues, flinching, running, and other behavior that might indicate when you have tipped the scales toward being "the crazy one."
"Where did your damned [mechanical pencil] go?"
This is a great time-wast...er, experiment. Select an easily replaceable object to which you can attach a great deal of emotional and territorial significance, then lose it. Spend the day looking for it in every nook and cranny; write paranoid treatises about who might have taken it and for what dark purposes; mutter to yourself about the lack of respect that you receive. Look in your boss's office last, because nine times out of ten, it will turn out that she borrowed it during a meeting and then promptly forgot that it wasn't hers.
*Created by science, to perform science! It's the cycle of life, embodied in glorious die-cast metal. Brings a tear to my eye, it does.
Posted by hilatron at 02:45 PM | Comments (1)
Alarming
So I haven't been to work since last Monday due to a combination of inconveniently scheduled medical appointments for Dads, a workplace that actually celebrates Veterans' Day, and the "Oh fuck it why come to work for one day in between?" effect. So you'd think that almost a full week off would make me feel a) rested and b) oh so accomplished.
Alas no. This morning my alarm went off at the usual time - so I know now. At the time I raised my head blearily from the pillow, said "WHO is making that HORRIBLE NOISE?", hit the clock, and went right back to sleep. It never even occurred to me that I should maybe get up or anything. It was plumb inconceivable. Sort of like being here is now, when I have all these important things to do at home still. Harrumph.
Posted by hilatron at 11:21 AM
November 08, 2004
stockingstockingstockingstocking
To continue the Five Buck Revolution discussion, and I hope you will, look to the sidebar at the right. We're keeping this going, people, oh yes we are.
In the meantime, there's still rent to pay. In addition to the Monster Stockings and other goods available at (ahem) Crafty Robot, the 3WA Crafts Fair is going on now! There are great bargains to be had on selected stockings here.
Even if you don't want a stocking, don't neglect to check out the main site for simply amazing jewelry, handbags, blankets, scarves, housewares, and more!
Posted by hilatron at 01:50 PM | Comments (1)
November 04, 2004
Five Buck Revolution
Okay, I've been thinking. I've also been bitching and wailing and moaning and complaining, but in there there's been some thinking. Let's face it - the Republicans outcampaigned us. They turned out their base in history-making numbers, and convinced large numbers of moderates that Bush is the man for the job despite some, shall we say, undeniable PR issues. They did good. Damn good.
But even so, Bush won the popular vote by just 3%. Almost 120 million people voted on Tuesday, and more than 55 million of them voted for Kerry.
55 million people! And yet I hear people saying that this country isn't for them anymore, that we've been overrun by fundamentalists who are going to change the country into a theocracy, that this is the beginning of the end, that there's no hope left. Well, when you say that you're ignoring that there are 55 million like-minded souls just waiting to be called to action.
So I started really thinking about what I myself feel like I can do. Sadly, it's not much. I'm broke and I'm busy. I can probably commit to sparing five dollars, or an hour of volunteer time, a month to helping out progressive causes. That's not much. It doesn't make me feel like a great big help, you know?
And it's unrealistic to think that all those 55 million Kerry voters will give even that much, for various reasons. Let's knock out a quarter of that number assuming that they're not progressives at all, but voted for Kerry because they're distraught by some of Bush's anti-Republican economic and interventionist policies, or picked him out of a hat, or whatever. Let's knock out another quarter who might be too destitute to even manage $5, or too busy juggling two jobs and a family to give any more time. And let's knock out another quarter assuming that they are already giving anyway.
That leaves 13,750,000 people who might be willing and able to donate a small amount of time and money each month to protecting access to abortion and birth control, defending gay rights, upholding freedom of speech, reclaiming civil liberties, and campaigning on the local and national level to regain gubenatorial, House or Senate seats in 2006.
What if all those people could make the same commitment as I can? 13,750,000 times five dollars is $68,750,000! That times twelve months comes to eight hundred and twenty-five MILLION dollars! Or, if all those people donated an hour of time a month, it would come to 165 million man-hours in just one year! That, my friends, is a force. That is a fucking movement.
And that is just what I think we need to start, guys. Let's not be Pollyannaish here - we're facing single-party control over all three branches, and that party's platform explicitly attacks access to abortion, gay rights, and protecting the environment. Our country's top administration has shown a disturbing lack of consideration for the very ideals that built this country, to valued dissent, to the lives of its own and other countries' citizens. The coming years are going to be an uphill battle just to hang onto what freedoms we have now. The religious right realized decades ago that they could motivate and unify people from widely disparate viewpoints with a dizzying range of goals, and push their agenda through. We need to do the same.
So I want to start a movement, asking people to commit just that five dollars or one hour a month to a progressive cause or candidate of their choice. I want to make people aware of the national organizations they can support - Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the HRC being just some of my favorite - and the local candidates they can work for as well, to try to shift the balance of power. I want to communicate with groups that are trying to smarten up the Left's PR strategy, because I believe that where we lose is not on policy, but on getting out the message - could MoveOn be that group now that they have to move beyond "Get Bush out?" Maybe, with 13 million people's help, they could. I want to get people excited about that little bit that each of us can do, give us each a direction to look that will help us turn our disappointment into energy. I want to fight and not give up and talk about moving to Canada. I want my fucking country back.
I usually prefer to beg for readers in a more subtle fashion, but if you read this and think it's a good idea, or even a crappy idea with a good idea somewhere inside, please pass this on to other people you know - direct link here. Let's get a discussion going. Let's talk about implementation, and getting the word out, and what organizations exist for us to pitch in with, and what a catchy name would be - whatever. Let's talk.
Posted by hilatron at 11:37 AM | Comments (37)
November 03, 2004
Gaaaaaaaah.
Okay, I am plotzing. I guess the old "don't look bad" philosophy still holds strong, despite the fact that the guys who keep winning seem to have no such limitations.
I can't really afford to spend $20 right now but today I am going to take $20 and make donations to Planned Parenthood, The Human Rights Campaign, and the ACLU. I know that my pathetic little $5 or $10 is not going to help much against the Right Tide that just swept into our national ecology, but I am looking at it as a pledge: I will not give in to despair. I'll remember that the popular vote was split by small percentages, and I'm not as isolated or lacking in allies as I feel in the harsh light of eleven state amendments. I'll keep sight of the fact that there's more to do than vote and hope. Remember the terrifying solidarity, the cornered-animal ferocity of the Right in the face of a successful Clinton administration? Let's channel some of that. There are a lot of us. You feel disenfranchised? Franchise yourself right up again by giving time or money to one of the many causes that are now more than ever in danger, reclaim "liberal" as something other than a dirty word, whatever. Just please don't throw your hands up and flop over, okay? I'm going to need some backup here.
Posted by hilatron at 11:56 AM | Comments (1)
And I thought I was twitchy yesterday.
You know how you can know something is going to happen but be totally unprepared for it? When I woke up this morning to discover that we might need to wait ELEVEN DAYS for the provisional ballots to be counted in Ohio, a little part of me curled up and died. This despite all my oh-so-world-weary joking yesterday about how we'll know who won sometime in 2006. I just can't stand it.
That said, Kerry: don't concede. The White House is going to tear you to pieces for it, make you look petty and ugly and mean - don't back down. You know they wouldn't. In fact, take a page from the Rove playbook, ignore the attacks and the insults, adopt a maddening attitude of "I am just right! So I don't even need to respond to your ridiculous arguments!" and stay on message: Wait Until All Votes Are Counted. Just say it over and over again and ignore all the other crap.
Don't concede. I was chastising myself earlier because I realized I was hoping that widespread vote fraud would be uncovered. This seemed mean-spirited and anti-democratic, to hope that people had been disenfranchised for my political convenience. Then I realized that I hope it will be uncovered because I AM SURE THAT IT HAPPENED, sure like a tin-foil hat. Those eleven days might give you time to prove some of it, you never know.
Whatever happens, anyway, it's clear there's some work to do: GOP Congress and Senate and, I'm sorry to say, likely White House, as many as four Supreme Court appointments coming up in the near future, all eleven Bigots for One Man and One Woman amendments passed with double-digit margins, fuck fuck fuck. I know everyone is tired and demoralized, but now's the time to try to figure out why this country is sliding towards the dark side and work to turn it around. We're still about half the voting citizenry, you know.
Posted by hilatron at 08:05 AM
November 02, 2004
Gosh I wonder what I will write about today?
I voted on my lunch hour, so now, if you're eligible to vote and don't, I'm legally required to kick your ass. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Two hours left! Even more if you're on the West Coast! Get out there!
While I was feeding my paper fill-in-the-bubble ballot into the optical scanner, a poll volunteer snuck up behind me and put a sticker on me. So maybe you can get felt up today too! But only if you vote! No action for the apathetic, after all.
I'm feeling good, if guarded. How about that voter turnout, kids? It's a good thing to see. Even the GOP admits that low voter turnout is usually good for them,* so the opposite...? Well, I don't want to jinx anything, but let's just say I'm feeling bouncy today. And a little twitchy. Go, man, go!
*And, by the way, what the fuck is that? "We often do better when the people aren't represented." I mean, how can you say things like that and sleep at night? It boggles.
Posted by hilatron at 04:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack