The Antisocial Socialist

Since I was already on the left coast, I took a jaunt up to Seattle to visit my friend annaotto. (You guys don't know her, but she's awesome, and if you met me through LJ, you have her to thank for it. She's my oldest internet friend—we met about a decade ago—and she was the one who got me into blogging.) Anyway, apologies to my other Seattle friends whom I didn't get a chance to see. I was only there for a scattered couple of days, and we had a lot of plans. Anyway, I need to go back to Seattle because it's my favourite place in the States, and next time I'll be more prepared about hanging out and such.

As previously mentioned, Seattle is in the midst of the worst heatwave ever, and as non-rainy weather is a bit of a curiosity there, hardly anyone has air conditioning. Fortunately, we'd already planned to spend most of the week on Orcas Island, which is surrounded by ocean and thus a little cooler, doing nature stuff.

Hence, most of these pictures are of nature things, but there are some city things for those of you who are allergic to outdoors.

P.S. Yes, rojonoir, of course I paid a visit to Giant Lenin. I didn't take a photo though. Anyway, I've now seen him covered in Christmas lights, holding an election sign in 2006, and now holding a huge burrito. I think Lenin would like burritos.

( lots and lots of photos, plus a bonus super-cool video )

Warning: Not vegan-friendly. Or grammarian-friendly. Or your-eyes-friendly.

I was talking to a friend who had recently returned from China. He and his girlfriend were of Chinese descent but had never actually been there—they'd gone there for work and didn't speak Mandarin, and they'd felt very odd and isolated. He was both grateful for the experience and saddened by how much an outsider he'd been.

He told me about the place that they were living, and suddenly I was whisked away in a flashback scene. I was having dinner with the couple on their backyard patio. It was a beautiful summer evening. We were drinking wine. I wanted to be there for real.

I noticed that they had beer bottles with bamboo shoots in them. "That's pretty," I remarked.

"Oh, they're for the pandas."

As if on cue, a huge, dirty panda came snuffling out of the bushes. It shambled over to where we were sitting and plucked the bamboo out of the beer bottle. Then it roared and I woke up.

I was not happy to be awakened from this dream. I mean, PANDA!

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EDIT: Hey Toronto people, does anyone want to go to the opera with me? $20 rush seats for Eugene Onegin. I've seen it before (in Moscow—I'm a bougie fuck) but it'd be cool to see the CoC do it too.

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EDIT II: Via Feministe, Postcards From Yo Momma is about the cutest thing ever. I just spent the last ten minutes or so laughing my ass off. (And now I can't send anything to it because my mom reads my blog.)

This is my favourite so far:

Look who finally learned the computer.
Look who finally learned the computer. Dad set me up email ACCOUNT AND ALSO SHOWED ME HOW TO GO ONLINE.I DON’T KNOW WHY EVERYTHING IS SUDDENLY WRITING BIG LIKE THIS, SO JUST IGNORE IT. SO HOW WAS THE CONCERT YOU WENT TO WITH FRIENDS/ CALL ME SOON. THIS WRITING IS WEIRD SORRY, LOVE MOM.

Imitation of my inbox this morning:


From –––––––––––––––––––Subject
Thaddeus Wyatt–––––––––––Massive rod is easy to gain
Facebook–––––––––––––––––"Don't extend it. End it."


Anyway, back to things I don't normally blog about.


My experiences with dogs

Before they went and had a kid, my parents found a stray dog—half Black Lab, half German Shepherd, and took him in. He was a friendly dog, so they figured that he belonged to someone who would soon claim him. They contact veterinarians and shelters, but no one came forward. Time passed. They called him "Dog," convinced that there was no way they'd be able to keep him.

He managed to get out once and get hit by a car. The vet was able to save his life, but the process, which involved metal plates in his legs, was expensive. My mother fundraised at her work to pay for the vet bills, and after that they were finally convinced that the dog was theirs. They named him Kemosabe after the (horribly racist) Lone Ranger character.

I grew up with Kemo as an older brother. I'm a bit biased in this regard but he really was the best dog in the entire world. He was terribly clever and very chill and he went everywhere with us. We'd go on car trips and stop through the McDonald's drive-through. Kemo would get an ice cream cone, which he was able to devour in a fraction of a second.

But pet ownership always ends in tragedy, and when he was fourteen and I was nine or ten, Kemo developed a tumour that grew to the size of a grapefruit. The vet couldn't do anything this time, and we had to put him down.

A cousin had a dog, Misha, that he needed to get rid of because he was moving. Misha was beautiful—a purebred Keeshond. We agreed to take him in. Unfortunately, he'd been bounced from house to house and had serious emotional problems as a result. He would only respond to commands from the person he perceived as alpha male, though he was fiercely protective of my mother to the point that he wouldn't let anyone else near her. He seemed to view me as a sex object, alas.

This grew worse as my parents finally split up. My mother kept the dog, but he was out of control. Eventually, he bit someone, and we had no choice but to put him down or have the state force us to do it. We'd only had him for a year and a half. I was crushed.

By this point, I was eleven. My mother asked me if I wanted to get another dog. I asked why we'd never gotten a cat. My father hadn't liked cats. My mother said, "Sure, why not?" and that was how we both became cat people.

I really do like dogs, though. With the lifestyle I have, I couldn't get one, but I have a blast every time I get to hang out with Evo, my friend's famous puppy.

Alternative menstrual products

I hate periods. And while I probably shouldn't feel this way, I hate women who get all spiritual about their womynly life magicks. I'm pretty sure that these women don't deal with massive blood loss and incapacitating cramps every month. I finally went on the pill continuously, so now I'm only faced with a period four times a year. Better living through chemistry, yay!

When I did have my period normally, I went through several packages of super-long pads (I'm afraid of toxic shock, so no tampons for me) every month. I probably used up half a landfill all my myself. Some of my more environmentally conscious friends thought that this was awful, and yeah, it is. But the sheer amount of blood we're talking about rules out a lot of alternative products unless I quit working and devoted my life to washing out reusable pads every half-hour or so. It would be damned near impossible to get what's, for me, a normal period every month as a teacher, because we don't get regular washroom breaks like one does in an office.

The other thing that I don't like about alternative menstrual products is how preachy their advocates get about them. I have been told that they will solve all of my period-related problems and that I'm a terribly irresponsible person for not using them (also for being on BC, but that's a different rant). All I can say to this is, "Hey sweetie, wanna trade periods?" I've met people for whom activism = menstrual activism, and it's just annoying.

One of the grossest things I ever saw was an appeal by women in Zimbabwe for First World women to donate pads. And certain First World women got all self-righteous about the environmental cost and wanted to donate alternative menstrual products. Completely inappropriate because, of course, the water with which you'd have to wash them out is not very clean, and this could cause all sorts of health problems. But here were these privileged North Americans telling women in Zimbabwe what they really needed. I'm not comparing my scenario to that one, but my feminism—specifically, my belief in dignity and choice—outweighs my environmentalism in this regard.

Regardless, I end up creating much less waste now, since I have my period less frequently. That's my environmental contribution right there.

Thoughts on spirituality

I'm interested in the theory that there's a "God gene"—something biologically innate that makes people perceive the divine. Whatever it is, I don't got it. I was raised agnostic, exposed not just to the fanatical Judaism of my grandparents but my friends' various strands of Christianity, the local Quaker meetings, Baha'i, and later, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Wicca.

Never felt a thing.

I know religious and spiritual sorts can't comprehend what it feels like to not feel spiritual. I've had people tell me that I'm a deeply spiritual person, to which I'm sort of like—what? No. That's projection. I might be a good person by the standards of many religions, but it's neither love nor fear that compels me to act that way.

On an intellectual level, I find it more utilitarian to act as though there is no spiritual world, no afterlife, no rewards, and no punishment. This earth is all we have; these people are the reason why we need to act ethically. No one is going to bail us out with a miracle at the last moment.

But most people aren't religious because they've reasoned it out intellectually. Faith must transcend reason. And I have no faith. I've also had people try to convince me that I have to choose to have faith before I feel faith, but this doesn't work, because what faith? I see no reason why Yahweh is a more sensible god to believe in than Zeus (or the Norse gods, who, face it, are way more awesome). So am I expected to arbitrarily choose a faith and believe in it, and then God will speak to me?

This said, I don't have the disdain that many atheists feel for religious people. I don't think that they're inherently more or less moral than atheists. I have contempt for two groups of religious people: those who get self-righteous about it and try to impose their beliefs on others (or even deny that others really hold the beliefs that they do—see people referring to me as "spiritual"), and people who belong to New Age cafeteria faiths, which I consider to be more of an offshoot of capitalism than any actual religion.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who do believe in some sort of supernatural force to describe how they came to that conclusion.

More later.

I know I said I was out of here, but then I stumbled on some classic bits of internets that I just needed to share.

1. My favourite libertarian has some sage advice for women who are threatened with violence over the interwebs. Some of it is sensible, like not blogging under your real name. Some of it is paranoid, like getting a private mailbox and buying a gun.

Some of it could only have come from a lolbertarian:

• Don't whine about it. If you whine, you're a big drama queen. Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey has dealt with much worse, and you don't see her whining! (Oh, except for in the post I just linked to, and in a whole bunch of other posts following the "I'm the perfect woman" post that made her an internets celebrity.)
• Ignore them and they'll go away. (Because that worked so well in grade school.)
• Don't vote. (I'm not kidding; she actually said this. Maybe that's why the Libertarian Party is so fringe; more people would vote for them, were it not for those internet stalkers!)

Folks, it's the "she shouldn't have been wearing that miniskirt" excuse, in digital form. I love it.

2. Fred Malek, John McCain's funding co-chair, is a Jew-counting dog-barbecuer. (Hat tip: Making Light.)

Take a moment to revel. I did, and then I wondered how I could get a job as a government Jew-counter.

3. Penguins. Chasing butterflies.

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(Hat tip: Pandagon.)

I have been informed by zingerella that, in honour of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa MacEwan, our fallen pressured-to-resign-by-fundamentalist-bigots fellow bloggers, today is International Panda and Shakespeare's Sister Day.

To celebrate these two awesome women (who could really use a note of support, as they've been under attack by complete assholes lately), have some videos:

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Round-up of supportive posts here.

Everyone's going to be blogging about this Guardian article so I might as well get it over with. My comment to strawberryrock:

I bet [Hitchens is] one of those people who thinks it's really hilarious to get together with his friends over a pint litre of gin and quote lines from The Simpsons and thinks that he's sounding all intellectual while really, his imitation of Homer going "D'oh" just makes him sound like a frat boy.

I want to play that game that Zizek recommended, though. It sounds fun, although I never really got the hang of video games.

Anyway, I don't so much have guilty pleasures as a number of bourgeois indulgences that I don't feel terribly guilty over: TV, LJ-voyeurism, shopping, raspberry dark chocolate lattes, and making fun of Christopher Hitchens.*

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On a much sadder note, if you have a pet, hug him or her today. The passing of a dog I've never met brought me to tears. Rest in peace, Zeke.

* My latest, and oddest, guilty pleasure is all the internets wanking over the death throes of For Better or For Worse (mostly via Comics Curmudgeon and binky_betsy). I thought Liz's various romantic entanglements and inevitable descent into suburban domestic servitude were bad enough, but then Michael got a $25,000 advance on a crappy unsolicited first novel—in Canada, no less!—and that is way more offensive than most Mallard Fillmore strips. Then again, the novel is Canadian historical fiction, and I honestly have no idea how any of that stuff gets published in the first place. I wonder if the protagonist fucks a bear.

The great Comics Curmudgeon took notice of me! That totally made my day. (Thanks to springheel_jack for pointing it out; I read CC frequently but not regularly and I might have otherwise missed it.) Does this mean that Josh reads mf_roasted?

Also via springheel_jack: Michael Crichton is a dick who can't write and can't take criticism. I heard he also has a tiny penis.

Via threeliesforone: UK unions join the War on Christmas. Solidarity forever and mad props to these folks.

News of the awesome: World's tallest man saves two dolphins. (Hat tip: see_my_glock.) (Much sadder dolphin news.)

Company building a fence to keep undocumented immigrants out gets fined for hiring undocumented immigrants. (Hat tip: seanmonster.)

I got back to teh intarwebs to find all the Steve Irwin jokes taken already. Not that I think it's entirely in good taste—that dude was awesome and I was completely addicted to his show when I had cable. Then again, if he'd stuck with koalas and wombats he'd still be with us today.

*sniff*

(And don't tell me that no one would watch a show with a guy chilling with koalas and wombats. That'd be even better than a show with a guy sticking his hand into crocodiles' mouths.)

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