Colorado Human Life Amendment

In 1992, Colorado became known as "The Hate State" after voters approved Amendment 2, which banned any law offering protection for employment discrimination based upon sexual orientation and was later overtuned by the Supreme Court. The 6th district of Colorado elected Tom Tancredo, Congress' most famous xenophobe, and the good people in Colorado's 4th district saw fit to send Marilyn Musgrave to Congress. She works hard for her constituents--that is if they are White, heterosexual, and conservative evangelical Christian. And then of course we have James Dobson and Focus on the Family.



Which is why it is not surprising that Colorado voters may have to decide about the Colorado Human Life Amendment--which would grant the same legal protections some Americans enjoy--to a fertilized egg. Mike Huckabee has of course endorsed the measure, saying that "Colorado has an opportunity to send a clear message that every human life has value." That is, unless you are a woman. Huckabee added that "passing this amendment will mean the people of Colorado will protect the sanctity of life from conception until natural death occurs." So does this mean the people of Colorado will start being more concerned about the number of Coloradoans who do not have access to decent health care, safe housing, or food? Actually, I think the definition of "sanctity of life" to Huckabee et al, is limited to existing only. Sanctity has actually little or nothing to do with quality of life.

If this affront to the innate value, sanctity, rights and freedoms of individual women is passed and becomes law in Colorado, it will be quite interesting to see how appellate "originalist" judges like Scalia and Thomas come down on a law that would have absolutely no Constitutional basis. whatsoever.

Artwork by Natalie Dee.

It is probably just as well I did not have children.

Clinic Sunday

I hate being sick, and I usually deny it until feverish delirium sets in or I cannot travel beyond a 18" radius of the toilet. About half-way during "There Will Be Blood", I started shivering from the cold and as the credits were rolling, my friend looks at me askance and asserts that it isn't cold in the theatre. I figured all I needed was a restorative steaming and spicy bowl of pho, but but the time I got home and dug out my old-fashioned mercury filled thermometer, I had a 102.5 temperature. Anyway, I dragged my feverish ass to the urgent clinic this morning and got sent home with a heavy duty antibiotic. I was even offered cough syrup with coedine--which for some reason I declined. Now if there's such a thing as cough syrup with percocet...

Anyway, the real purpose here is to vent my frustrating encounter with my employer and health insurance provider. I arrive with a fever, horrible headache and ear aches, disturbing cough, and my throat so raw and tight I can barely speak above a whisper. It is a Sunday morning, and it is quite clear why I'm there. The nurse who checks me in does the requisite blood pressure, weight check, pulse and taking of the temperature. She then starts asking me when was the last time I had a pap smear and mammogram. Now, my employer and health care provider as spent over a BILLION dollars on an electronic medical record system, which I use myself on a daily basis to reference patient charts (I'm forbidden to access my own). But I knew that all this nurse had to do was hit a button and she could clearly see that I had a pap smear less than 3 months ago, and that I'm overdue for a mammogram. So I get a mini-lecture on the importance of mammography--how early detection can SAVE LIVES! Really? I'd never heard that! She seemed reassured that I do routine self-exams and am scheduled for a mammogram soon. All of this while I'm staring at her glassy-eyed and hacking up orange phlegm. She then notices my neck scar and asks about my thyroid. After I mention that she should be able to find my latest TSH levels under the flowsheet section of my chart, a light goes on in her head and she figures out I must be familiar with the system. What do I do? Well, I'm a social worker in palliative care. "I LOVE SOCIAL WORKERS" she gushes and goes on and on about how angelic we are to so unselfishly devote ourselves to the betterment of ALL MANKIND. All of this before I've been able to see the freakin' doctor--the one with the DRUGS. I don't remember if I said anything about the fact I'm an anti-social social worker or not, but she finally hustled out of there and finally saw the doctor, for whom I had to describe my symptoms and their onset for the THIRD damn time since I'd walked in the building.

So I'm sorry this is the first post after a rather long haitus, but I needed to post something new, and this is as good as it gets today.

Oh, and by the way--Daniel Day Lewis is beautiful and amazing.

Friday bugs

Long-time favorite

Spider Tests

What's Opera, Doc?

To Have A Spear and Magic Helmet

Thanksgiving Leftovers

One major holiday down, one to go. The attached photo of Sophie sums up how we spent a portion of our down-time.

Off to New Orleans tomorrow for work--am going with mixed feelings as it is the first time I've been since Katrina.

Somehow.....this summer

Because It Isn't Enough Just HAVING Breast Cancer...

Ford Motor Company, in concert with the Susan B. Komen foundation (natch) is "powering" the "Warrors in Pink" campaign, featuring American Idol Kelly Clarkson. So while you are receiving chemo infusions, pulling chunks of your hair out and otherwise just feeling like shit, you can "rock the cause" like the true pink warrior you're supposed to be. Like Kelly, you can wear your rockin' Warrior gear, and imagine the day that your hair will grow out think and full again and blow seductively like Kelly's--all while rockin' the cure, baby! You can "wear it straight up or rock it. Either way, you can rock the world!"

This is a campaign for Breast Cancer awareness. Which means that the money dumped for all this pink crap goes toward manufacturing more pink crap, including those annoying giant pink ribbons that adorn buildings during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The website states that 100% of proceeds goes to the Susan B. Komen foundation. What I'd like to know is what percentage of that actually goes to research. Greater awareness, the story goes, increases the rates of early detection--but I wonder if there has been a randomized controlled trial that shows that wearing a Warrior Hoody or sending Yoplait stick pink yogurt lids has actually been a statistically significant factor in higher rates of early detection.

I think of the breast cancer patients who have come through our program--like the 42 year-old whose main goal was to have her pain managed without becoming too sedated so that she can still communicate with her 10 year-old daughter. When I think of patients like her, and see this Warrior Rockin The Cure shit--it makes me a bit crazy. When Barbara Ehrenreich wrote her piece for Harper's--"Welcome to Cancerland", I wonder if she had any idea things would get to Warriors in Pink--Powered by Ford. Because Ford Cares. If you have never read Barbara's piece, you can do so here.

Have a great day everyone. I'm off to test-drive a new Warrior Mustang.

The End Is Near (Again)

Last night my brother, sister-in-law and mother (along with several hundred others) attended a lecture by someone named Joel Rosenberg, a Messianic Jew, best-selling author (Tom Clancy meets Tim LaHaye) and celebrity eschatological swami beloved by the likes of Rush Limbag and Sean Hannity. Afterwards, I inquired about the lecture (e.g. was there any rubbing of a crystal ball involved, etc.) and the summing up involved the following: "of course there is no claim that anyone truly knows the exact time when the Lord will come back." My response of "but why not sell a few hundred thousand books off a gullible public in the meantime" was met with a disgusted harrumphing, a "you're so cynical" with a side order of glare for good measure.

Normally, and for good reason, that would've been the end of my curiosity about Joel Rosenberg. This isn't a blog-rant about why smart people like my aforementioned family members would find this sort of thing worth their time. I'm more than adequately accustomed to their exasperation with my unabating cynicism and my tendency to be pretty pissed off a good deal of the time (although I'm not like that at work or with other people in my life--I wonder why that is?). Many Christians have been curious about/obsessed with "the end times" for a very long time, and modest fortunes have been made by those deluded and ego-centric enough to suggest that he or she had discovered the eschatalogical equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. My pastor-ex-husband used to avoid asking parishoners what they'd like to hear from him about as inevitably someone would request an indepth exegesis on Revelation. Cue yawn.

I won't be able to contain my sudden interest in this topic with one post, so I'll end this one with the following questions that are on my mind today:

1) Why doesn't anyone ever suggest that the Anti-Christ could be an American? In my mind--there are some pretty strong contenders:

2) Apparently Mr. Rosenberg's primary sage advice for those worried that the world will end before the Rockies have a few more chances to win the World Series is this: pray for peace and prepare for war ("oh Lord please help the US kick some Islamic ass). My reponse to this is "whaaa?"

3) Rosenberg mentions that conspiciously absent in the cast of characters involved in the War of Gog and Magog is Iraq and Egypt. I wonder how he would classify the absence of......China?

Next time: The Geography of Gog and Magog.

And So It Begins...

No Genius Here

Another year has gone by........without being chosen for a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Too Much Time On His Hands, Or Clever and Creative? You Decide.

Someone by the name of Reverend Brendan Powell Smith has taken the time to recreate stories from the Bible completely in Legos. So far, my favorites are how Moses and the Hebrews escape from Egypt, Paul's exhortations about marriage and proper deportment for Christian women, and the desert trial and temptation of Jesus.

Shorter John Eldridge: Nice Guys Not Only Finish Last, But They're Less-Than-Godly Pansies Too.

Regular readers here have not likely heard of John Eldridge, best-selling Christian author and genius behind revolutionary new theory of human (and by human, he mainly means men) development. Normally I remain out of the loop about stuff like this, but several important men in my life have either embraced and/or opened their minds to this misogynistic and paternalistic view of the world--repackaged as a way for men to reassert their "wild hearts" (as the heart of God himself is "wild") while asserting all the benefits of male privilege and the more natural submissive position of women.

You see, the modern church has turned Christian men into a punch of overly sensitive, pussy-whipped sensitivoes like Mr. Rogers, where the true model of a Christian manly man is William Wallace (as portrayed by Mr. Manly himself, Mel Gibson, in Braveheart). Bitchy hairy-legged and overly independent feminists have spoiled everyone's fun---what with their pesky tendency to demand things like control of their own bodies and equal protection under the law. So here are the developmental differences:

Men pass through several bibically based stages in life: 1) boyhood; 2) cowboy; 3) warrior; 4) king; and 5) sage. Women, not surprisingly, want and need to know they are desired. While men want to paint their faces, grunt and tear other men from limb to limb, women want to be pursued and fought for. Men watch "Lord of the Rings" and "Gladiator." Women bond while watching "Sense and Sensibilities" and "Sleepless in Seattle." Women are the ballroom dancer who enjoys following the man's lead, and becomes more beautiful in the process! Like magic! Women are the responder to the man's sexual prowess. A woman's need for control is born out of....you guessed it....fear.

None of this claptrap is new, nor is it limited to a the world view of this particular flavor of Christianity. but I wonder if Mr. Eldridge has actually read the New Testament, in particular the teachings of Jesus?

Free Bryce!

I realize that this writer occasionally opines on the subject of children--and usually not that positively. This post is no exception--so you have been warned. Although, this really speaks more those challenged adults who felt confident enough in their parenting skills to inflict the products of such misguided thinking on the rest of us.

Saturday morning, after having a relaxing morning I headed out for some power shopping with two primary goals in mind: 1) floor lamp, and; 2) new bed for the guest room. I'm in Lamps Plus five minutes or so when I hear a thump, then a crash, then a shrill voice that I'm sure Sophie can hear back at home imploring an obstreperous delinquent by the name of "Bryce" to pull it together, shut up, and act his age. I'm always struck by what many parents today are willing to put up with. One thump, much less a crash, and my happy ass would've been ordered outside to sit and wait. But no. All of us in the store were regaled alternately by pleading ("I'm just trying to pick out some cool lighting for your room" ) to shaming ("I'm so embarassed for you--a boy your age acting like this"). Now, by this time, my allegiance had switched to Bryce. I wondered if his acting this way was a cry for help--a deliberate attempt to push his mother over the edge so that he could be rescued by a relative whose voice didn't cause coyotes to weep. This woman clearly had lost any sense that there were other people in the store who could hear her futile screeching. Now, I know people who know the challenges inherent in taking children out in public and would' ve tsked disapprovingly in Bryce's direction--understanding the frustration that Bryce's mother was feeling. However, why is it I have a strong hunch that Bryce's behavior in Lamps Plus that day is part of a giant chicken coming home to roost in a nest built by Medusa?

Later same day....I'm loading Sophie in the truck when I look across the parking lot and see a lone toddler--maybe 3-4 years old, standing on a curb only inches from being in a busy parking lot. Parking lot is relatively quiet, but I start to walk across in case I need to snatch her out of harm's way. Suddenly a voice from somewhere yells "TAMRA--don't you dare step off that curb--don't make me come out there!" Tamra promptly steps into the street and at any minute I expect to see a panicked parent come running. Instead, The Voice tells someone to "go get your sister out of the street." Mere moments later an older boy comes out, picks up Tamra and disappears back into some apartment.

And still later the same day... I'm leaving my mother's house and I pass a man riding a bicycle. He has all the required accessories, including a helmet. But, he also has a small child riding on his shoulders--with no helmet. So, the one who is clearly already brain damaged wears the helmet and leaves the child open to serious injury should he lose control of the bike and drop her. What the hell???

And yes, still later...I get in the drive-thru queue at Wendy's to get a Diet Coke and in front of me is a mini-van with a licence plate frame that informed disterested people that someone associated with said van is an alumni of Brigham Young University. I'll admit my brain fetched the most easily accessible stereotype and I muttered to myself that that van was probably full of more children. A fatherly head sticks out from said van and yells into the drive-thru ordering-thing: "We need 5 junior cheeseburgers, 3 orders 99 cent chicken nuggets, 6 orders of fries, 1 grilled chicken sandwich, 5 small Sprites, 2 large diet Cokes and 2 large Frostys." At this point, no one had misbehaved and I'd heard only the sound of a father ordering dinner, but I couldn't fathom a scenario in which my quest for a simple diet Coke might be thwarted by a missing order of nuggets or a burger that had an unwelcome addition of mustard. So, as no one was behind me, I backed up and out of the line, and drove straight home.

Culture and a Dog's Life

Because I am a football fan as well as a dog lover, I've followed the Michael Vick/dogfighting story beyond my usual news sources of NPR, etc. There are some fellow athletes as well as sports fans who have come out in support of Vick--some asserting that there is unfair attention paid to a rich black athlete who is only one of thousands of people who participate in dogfighting, and others crying foul because dogfighting is actually a "sport" that is rooted in cultural traditions. Well, slavery was rooted in cultural tradition too.

The Atlanta chapter of the NAACP has urged the NFL to not abandon Vick, but to allow him to return to his job as Falcon's quarterback after he serves his prison sentence. I personally think his NFL career is likely over, but whether or not he has a job after he does his time is really not an issue. What I want to know is what possesses any person to participate in such an activity? Even if someone were not to gain pleasure from watching two dogs wound and sometimes kill each other, what kind of person can look on such a thing and not be repulsed? There is something fundamentally flawed in the soul of such a person.

Addendum:

I should clarify that Michael Vick's employment status post-pokey isn't an issue for me. He'll be a millionaire many times over even if he has to give back his 20+ million signing bonus and part of his salary. I'll admit that my initial reaction to his particular story is a wish that he would be publicly humiliated, shamed and stripped of any football past or future glory. The humiliation part is well on its way and as I said before, his football career is likely over, especially as it appears that the players union is not doing to to defend him. I hope he does jail time, and I hope he receives mental health care to address that warped part of his spirit that found it acceptable to burn and hang dogs who didn't successfully rip another dog from limb to limb. But should he be denied the opportunity to return to work...to life...after doing his time? Some team owners wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole (it doesn't help that the brillance of his college play didn't exactly translate to the NFL anyway), but he shouldn't completely dispair. If it helped Jerry Jones get another Superbowl ring, Jerry would probably hire him if he'd killed his own mother.

Speaking of feeling sick...

I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who better personifies over-privilege (spoiled), a sense of entitlement, and obeisance to American consumer culture. You have the balls to lecture my sister about the perils (to my 4-year old nephew) of dating a man who is not a Christian--this after having the gall to refer to certain people as trash. Did I really, truly, hear you laughingly (jokingly, I'm sure you'd say) suggest that the US "trade" with Mexico by this country accepting with open arms all of the hard-working Mexicans while sending Mexico all of the "white and black trash" who "do not like to work."

I'm embarassed for you--for your pseudo-intellectual preening and for your assumption that the world exists to help maintain your privileged status. You need to know that no one is really that impressed. You need to know that the attitude you and your wife project is one of disdain for those who do not fit neatly w/in the realm of what is hip, cool, and $$$. If this projection is not truly a reflection of what you think--then you need to check it.

I'm just still really pissed about your "trash" comment and it is making me mad about everything else. Grow up, please.

I Threw Up A Little In My Mouth This Morning When I Read This...

Even back in the days when the ex and I were in Ft. Worth and he was attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the joke was that many of the women enrolled there in order to earn their MRS. It wasn't completely unfounded--I knew more than a handful of women who met their husbands there and then dropped out themselves to marry and become an incubator. However, here is the latest from the mind of someone born from the shallow end of the intellectual gene pool.

Not surprisingly, this new degree program is a bachelor's degree--let's get those young women in here fresh out of their home schooling/Christian private school programs before they have a chance to go to college and be corrupted by more learnin'!

This makes me physically ill. Pardon me while I go puke. AAAUUUUUUUGHGGHHHHHH!

Freedom's Just Another Word for Childlessness

Last night on "60 Minutes" Morley Schaefer interviewed Dame Helen Mirren. I've always found her pretty fabulous, but I wanted to cheer at the following (not necessarily verbatim--I wasn't taking notes) exchange:

MS: "Do you ever regret not having children?"

HM: "No, never"

MS: (faintly surprised facial expression) "Really? Why?"

HM: "Because it has given me freedom".

I suspect it is safe to say that most women either become, or want to become, mothers. But it is so refreshing to hear a famous woman talk about the real reason for childlessness that so may are afraid to admit out loud (and perhaps even to themselves).

Moving Day

I worked 4-10 hour days this week so that I can take off tomorrow and move my junk from my hated Hooterville abode to my new place that while in one of those generic, soulless, cookie-cutter apartment complexes (uh, sorry, apartment homes), it appears to be quite the step-up from whence I came. However, I have this unwelcome feeling of dread that the sword of Damocles is hanging over my head and it could be that unbeknownst to me a noisy family of 6 will be my upstairs neighbors or that the water is so hard it will turn my dishes and clothes orange. I mean, what does it mean when the leasing agent conveniently told me after I'd signed the lease that some residents run some orange kool-aid through their machines now and then? I may be repeating this exercise sooner rather than later.

Nonetheless, I look forward to no longer seeing my neighbor who drives around in his giant Ford with giant confederate flags flapping in the breeze whilst his horn blares out "Dixie." I will not miss the totally clueless perenially out-of-work guy who likes to race his very loud toy cars out in the parking lot at 2 am. I will not miss my downstairs neighbor who yells obscenities at his wife and I will not miss the 4 barely out of adolescence men-children who live across the hall and play Metallica a stadium-level sound. And, I will not miss dealing with an apartment office staff that can most diplomatically be described as "charm-free."

I will however, miss the trees and my view of downtown from my balcony. I hope the change will do me good.