NaBloPoMo #16: Praying for Rain

I’m going to post about the water thing for real, but omg, the Georgia governor prayed for rain and it totally worked, for real!

You know, he didn’t check the forecast in advance or anything.

NaBloPoMo #14: Change of Living Situation

OH MY GOD LATENESS.

Due to mold and toxicness and evil management (I will probably share this story later), G and I were cleaning for a long time. We just moved my mattress out to the living room, so we can sleep a little further from the mold.

That’s right. We’re sharing a bed in the living room, just to escape the mold.

Also, my current escape from stress is to laugh at everything. I think it amuses G, which is good. S too, though she tends to stare at me a little more when I collapse laughing.

NaBloPoMo #13: Mobs and New Jersey. Sort of.

Apparently, telling the mob to stay out of New Jersey is totally effective. Totally.

Yeah, this is the entirety of the post, as I CANNOT BREATHE.

NaBloPoMo #12: Corrupt Cops

Bolingbrook, IL, Sgt. Drew Peterson’s third wife was exhumed today because of people realizing her manner of death was kind of suspicious. You see, she was found facedown in their bathtub with a wound on the back of her head. The suspected cause of death? Accidental drowning.

Except there was no water in the tub.

Investigators theorized the tub had drained.

Apparently, this is what happens when you allow cops to investigate one of their own, and problems are only noted when the fourth wife goes missing.

(I have a real topic for tomorrow, a painfully real topic that requires lots of links and discussion, but it’s going to have to wait, because I have fifteen minutes left to post this and am not in the mindset for realness.)

NaBloPoMo #12: Moldy Apartment

Symptoms of black mold poisoning. And another list of symptoms.

Why am I posting this as my day’s NaBlo? Because, one month and one week ago, our upstairs neighbors flooded their bathroom. Rather, their children were not properly supervised by the babysitter, turned on the bathtub, and left it running until it flooded their bathroom. The immediate effect of that? It flooded our bathroom. According to G, who was home at the time, water was literally pouring from our ceiling. Maintenance came and tried to dry out the bathroom, and the guy promised to come back and check. Cue now, when they haven’t come back to check. Our bathroom ceiling has leaked one more time since then. We called maintenance then, and they came when only S was home. She didn’t know what was going on, and maintenance was supposed to come back.

Over the last couple of weeks, S, G, and I have had weird stuff going on. G has started falling asleep relatively early and sleeping a lot, I’ve had an extremely hard time waking up (to the point where I don’t hear my alarm at all), and we’ve all been itchy, sneezing, nauseated, vomiting, and missing work. We’ve also all had mental fogginess, and I’ve had muscle pain, with my joints worse than usual, too.

Yesterday, S and I were talking about it. We realized that, hey, it’s gotten worse lately, and only started after the flooding upstairs. Sadly, we’re almost positive now that we have mold in our ceiling (and possibly walls and floor) that are making us sick. Maintenance is supposed to be coming tomorrow, when I have the day off. (S will also be home; she managed to break her arm today.) I’m making sure they look at all those places, as well as checking under our kitchen sink. (Before, our garbage disposal was backed up and leaking. There’s some mold under there, but not very much.)

I just want this fixed, and I want to be compensated as much as possible for missed work and screwed-up health. It’s just plain wrong that it’s going on at all.

Meanly, I also hope upstairs is getting mold spores that are making them sick. Bastards.

NaBloPoMo #11: Racism in the context of…hair?

All right. I was going to talk about Veteran’s Day and my grandfather, who flew a bomber in the South Pacific during World War II, my relative who was a drummer in the Civil War, and my uncle who was forced into retirement from his position as a colonel with the U.S. Army because the government does not appropriately value its experienced workers, even when it’s something as important as managing supply lines, but everyone is talking about that today.

So instead, I’m going to talk about how, apparently, making fun of hair is racist.

A wee bit of background: High School Musical is, by most accounts I’ve read, a really terrible Disney movie. For some reason, it has a decent Internet following. “Fandom” is the group of people interested in the same show, movie, band, or whatever; in this particular case, High School Musical. “Fanfiction” is fiction written about the show, movie, etc. In this instance, it’s about romantic relationships between two teenage boys.

I have never seen High School Musical or read much about it, or any fanfiction. So I have no idea how in character any of it is, especially as regards the jokes in question.

The big, huge to-do? Apparently, authors are including jokes about one kid’s hair. The kid is black, or half-black; I know the actor’s mother is Italian, but I don’t know about the character’s background. He looks like this:

Now, personally? I love his hair. I think it’s really cute and looks good on him. I also realize that teenage boys will tease each other about anything, even between friends, and it’s not meant to be hurtful or taken seriously. Then, I think most normal people realize that.

Not large portions of this community.

Arguments range from, on the one hand of idiocy, “Well, people make jokes about how the other kid is pale, and I don’t like it!” to, “People LOSE THEIR JOBS OVER THEIR HAIR AND THEREFORE THE FANFICTION REGARDING TEENAGERS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.” Because, you know, what happens between teenagers who mock each other (in fanfiction, no less!) clearly makes a massive impact on what happens in the real adult world.

Let’s put this in a non-race perspective for a moment.

G is losing her hearing. She’s going to eventually be totally deaf. She’s 20. Do I mock her for this? HELL YES. But if it ever, EVER influenced things at work or her ability to get a job, that would be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and utterly wrong.

Or here’s this one. I have a genetic condition that leaves me in constant pain, sometimes unable to walk without a cane, and foresee eventually needing a wheelchair, at least part of the time. G calls me crippled, I call myself crippled, and we joke about it. But again, if I was to lose my job over it, it would be completely wrong.

You see? There is a massive difference between “joking between friends” (which it looks like this is) and “affecting people’s lives outright”. The hair thing appears to be the former in this context. An example of the latter is a teacher being fired for having an afro. And yes, that is from last year.

And the thing that gets me? It looks like they’ve called his hair “poofy”, “shaggy”, etc. It doesn’t look (and again, I haven’t read, so I don’t know) like they’ve used words like “nappy” or “kinky”. Those words certainly have different connotations. When my brother-in-law calls my older niece’s hair “nappy” (she’s his stepdaughter), I want nothing more than to hit him, because that definitely has racial connotations, and not in a remotely positive way. But that’s not the same as teenage boys teasing each other. Not in the least.

NaBloPoMo #10: Writers’ strike

Most of you probably heard about breakdown in talks between Hollywood writers and producers. But how many of you know what the strike is really about?

It’s about fair payment for the work of the writers. Their work continues to pay off for studios, for producers, for advertisers, well after the original airing. But the writers make nearly nothing. They currently earn $0.04 per DVD sale. All they’re asking in that regard is to have it doubled–$0.08 per DVD sale. When the average DVD is around $14.99 for a movie and $39.99 for a TV series season, that’s nothing. That’s 0.5% of the price of the average movie on DVD. The studios can certainly afford that.

And they make nothing, nothing for episodes aired over the Internet, or offered for download. Others sure do. Why else would networks make them available online? Advertising dollars. And yet, the writers, the backbones of the show, do not get paid.

Am I upset by the fact that my shows will be out of episodes soon? Sure. But on the other hand, not only is 24 canceled, but the writers deserve their pay. So pay them.

NaBloPoMo #9: No news

Due to great roommate drama last night, being at work all day today, and then grocery shopping tonight (yay! We have food!), no news post for today. I’ll probably do one in the morning hours to make up for this. Mea culpa.

NaBloPoMo #8: EDNA

The House of Representatives today passed a federal ban on job discrimination against homosexual and bisexual people. The bill does not include transgendered people. The House passed the bill 235-184. It’s expected to be more difficult to get it through Senate, but probably doable. Bush is expected to veto the bill if it gets to him; the White House “has cited constitutional concerns and said the proposal could trample religious rights.”

Notice, if you will, that the bill excludes churches and the military. (It should not exclude the military. We’ve never lost a battle because Jim and Bob were gay and it made everyone else drop their guns.) So I’m missing the part where it would “trample” anyone’s religious rights. You know what? They have every right to personally think that people who are not straight should be stoned or not have a job or whatever. They do not have the right to fire or refuse to hire someone for it, or at least they shouldn’t. Equal Protection ring a bell here?

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now, see, this–and it doesn’t include religious organizations, due to the First Amendment–should guarantee that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, is equally protected under the law. In Romer v Evans, the Supreme Court found that people who are other than straight are protected by the Equal Protection Clause. (The decision was delivered by Justice Kennedy, by the way. Not, say, Ginsburg. The man is fairly conservative.) That was in 1996. Only now is it becoming legislation, instead of judicial precedent? Only now are people who are not straight being afforded equal protection as regards the ability to gain or keep a job? Now, after at least one person I know has lost a job because of sexual orientation?

Better late and incomplete, I suppose, than not at all. There have been efforts to pass similar legislation since 1975, after all.

And, by the way, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” does not count. It is discrimination in any form, unless you also plan to forbid straight people from discussing their sexual preferences, orientations, partners, families, and from flirting with coworkers.

Several other articles:
House approves ban on job bias against gays. From the Dallas Morning News.
On Protecting Gay Americans from Workplace Discrimination. An “Open Forum” article from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Anti-bias bill clears hurdle. From the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.
Alabamians in House Reject Gay Rights Measure. From WSFA-12, Montgomery, Alabama. (Text article, not a video.)
House votes for protections for gay workers. From The LA Times.
House OKs ban on homosexual discrimination. From The Washington Times.

NaBloPoMo #7: Child Support

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the case of a man who tried to get out of paying child support. The crux of the argument is that the ex-girlfriend said she was physically incapable of getting pregnant. Whether it’s something she had been told by a doctor, or was just something she was saying, is not covered in the article.

The National Center for Men sponsored the case. If you look at the homepage, you can see that they have admirable goals: helping men with divorces and custody, men who are abuse victims, men who have dealt with discrimination, and so on. They do, however, fail completely on the second point: “[Y]ou are being forced into paternity and/or an unfair child support obligation against your wishes.”

No, see, this is how it works. If you have sex and don’t want a child, you use protection. Condoms exist for a reason. Or there’s this surgery called a vasectomy, which nearly always results in male sterility. There is a failure rate of about 1%, but that’s better than condoms, which have a breakage and slippage rate of about 3%. Either way, those are steps that men can take to prevent pregnancy and therefore child support payments.

In an earlier article, the man in question did say he expected to lose the case. He takes it as, “That’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.” In the same article, a law professor points out that it’s a societal responsibility.

Here’s what it boils down to. If you have sex, you are responsible for the outcome. If you do not want that sort of outcome, you use protection. Simple.

I do think they have a decent point, however. A man should have a certain amount of time post-conception to opt out of paying child support. In this opt out, though, they must forfeit all parental rights. They do not get to see the child, they do not get to expect the child to have their last name, they do not get any of the perks if they are not willing to pay or take responsibility.

In conclusion: No glove, no love if you want no kids.