In Which I Needlessly Pick a Fight

You’ll have to excuse what I’m about to write.  But under the present circumstances, when I want my doctor to avail herself of the most effective and efficient course of action to return me to the land of the pain-free, I am short of patience for anti-abortion men.

Here’s the sentence all you dudes need to practice saying, “At the end of the day, it’s your body and you have to make the best decision you can for you as to what you should do.  I can’t tell you.”

Go ahead.  Try it now.

See?

I probably shouldn’t get this worked up, but this is where the line is for me, and where I come down firmly on the side of the gender essentialists.  You, as a man, cannot know what it is like for me, as a woman, to have the reproductive tract I do.  And I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that you can imagine exactly what it’s like to have organs designed to stir a human being out of a mush of genetic material.  You cannot imagine the wide-ranging emotions we feel when they do what they’re designed to do and the great mix of emotions we feel when they don’t.

You might be able to sympathize, greatly, but you cannot know.

And so I’m going to clue you in.  All this?

Even if it’s all true–that having an abortion can make a woman depressed, suicidal, etc., etc.,*–so fucking what?

No, seriously.  So what?

Women are adult human beings and adult human beings have to make decisions that are difficult, that might be the least shitty choice out of a lot of shitty choices, that THEY MAY COME TO DEEPLY REGRET.

So what?

Arguing that abortion is wrong because some women come to regret it only makes sense if you believe that women shouldn’t be and aren’t capable of living with their tough choices and must be protected from having to make those choices.

And the fact that some of you seem to think that you should be the ones making those choices instead, when you will never, ever feel the full weight of the decision?  In a fair world, that should seem so ludicrous on its surface as to not even be up for discussion.

*Though let me be clear that many of the things Mr. Cassman is claiming as true are just lies, lies, lies, designed to bolster his point.

A Review of a Book I’m Reading

Ivy gave me Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man edited by Robert McEleaine to read a while back and I have been slowly working through it.  I can only read little bits at a time because it’s bad form, I believe, to sit in the bathroom and sob.

But holy shit.  What a powerful, moving book.  It’s all these letters from people affected by the Depression to the President and other figures.

I’m sure I’ll be talking more about it, but I just have to get it out there that y’all need to read this book, for sure.

Is John Rich Nashville’s Most Visible Douchebag?

It’s not like I even go looking for stories about John Rich.  I’d like nothing better than to know nothing about John Rich, so that I can just listen to Big and Rich when they come on the radio and enjoy their music without having to think about it too hard and without feeling gross about supporting John Rich.

But it’s like these stories find me.

And so today we have the story of Rosanne Cash delivering the smackdown on John Rich for Rich’s claim that Johnny Cash would vote for John McCain.

When John Rich recently took a Florida stage to support the presidential campaign of John McCain, he said, “Somebody’s got to walk the line in the country. They’ve got to walk it unapologetically,” before singing “Walk the Line. “And I’m sure Johnny Cash would have been a John McCain supporter if he was still around.”

But, as the Washington Post pointed out, Cash supported Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Cash’s daughter, singer/songwriter/author Rosanne Cash, has issued the following statement, “It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so.

“I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals, and even I would not presume to say publicly what I ‘know’ he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation. It is unfair and presumptuous to use him to bolster any platform. I would ask that my father not be co-opted in this election for either side, since he is clearly not here to defend or state his own allegiance.”

God, I love Rosanne Cash so much.  And I think the thing anyone who is using Johnny Cash as a guiding light needs to realize is that Cash pretty consistently stood for the little guy and standing with the little guy doesn’t always easily translate to one party or another.  But dang, the other thing is that if you think voting for John McCain makes you some kind of rebel, who’s sticking it to the Man, your grasp of reality is… I mean, one rich guy trying to encourage a bunch of working folks to vote for another rich guy as a way to show their rebellion would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

(Hat tip Tiny Pasture and the TNDemocrats, who, rumor has it, are all nineteen.)

(Also, in doing research for this post, I learned that Wes Borland is teaming up with Marilyn Manson.  Now, if only they could get Alice Cooper and Mick Mars involved, with maybe Tori Amos singing back-up, it would be my dream lineup).

Who’s Taking Care of Whom Here?

So, my dad is coming down on Wednesday so that I can go to the doctor Thursday and not have to fret about whether I’ll be done in time to go to the inspection Thursday afternoon.

I’m really glad.  It’s a load off my mind.

I half-heartedly tried to talk him out of it, but he said that was the whole point of retiring, so he could do stuff like this.  And who am I to argue with that, I ask you, America?

Well, well, well, well

So, there’s this small white building over at the house I’m trying to buy and in it is what looked to me like a small water heater and I was all “Why would a place need a water heater in the middle of the yard?”

But it turns out that that’s a pump for a well.

So, that’s cool.

I wondered, since there’s water run all over the yard–spigots just about everywhere you could hope for–how that didn’t hit a family with a huge water bill, but I guess if you’re using city water in the house and possibly well water on the land, that makes sense.  If we get the house, I’m going to have to have someone look into that.

And, most cool of all, is that now, of course, I have a place to sit and spin my yarn, whenever I learn how to spin yarn.

This seems to be a house straight from the disir, so I really, really hope it works out.

Semi-Live-Blogging the State of My Innards

A month ago: Innards decide to do their thing a hair early. Fair enough.

Throughout the month: Innards don’t bother to stop. Fine. My innards are overachievers.

Friday: I’m sitting at my desk and it’s like someone reached right inside my left hip, pinched as hard as he could and twisted. I about throw up. It’s not the worst pain I’ve ever had, but it’s the weirdest.

Saturday morning: I send up the Cooter Signal. I get lots of good medical advice and I promise to call the doctor.

Just now: I call the doctor. I’m telling the woman on the phone about my symptoms. She repeats twice–twisting pain in left side. I say yes. She says everyone’s in a meeting. She will see if she can fetch someone out. Stay by the phone. Don’t panic.

You can guess which one of those orders I’m following.

Actually, I’m more pissed than panicked. I’m trying to buy a house. I don’t have time for this nonsense. Of course, if I’d gone to the doctor back when this all started… But I have some other excuse for that time! Also legitimate and… So, yeah, I’m pissed at myself. I am a moron.

Edited to add:

2:30–I heard from the nurse.  She’s got me in with a gynecologist on Thursday.  I, by the way, told the home inspector we could do it Thursday, if he needed.  So, that’s kind of a mess.

And so…

I called my dad.

Because there’s just a shit-ton that has to happen this week.  Checks need to be run here and there.  Paperwork needs to be run here and there.  Inspections need to be overseen.  Insurance quotes need to be gotten.  Etc. Etc. Etc.

And I’m not sure I can deal with all that stuff and my innards needing straightened out.

And so I have him on Stand-by to come down and help.

I did not signal him with the Cooter Signal, though.  Neither of us have insurance coverage so good as to cover the years of therapy that would necessitate.

Bredesen the Blogger

Our Governor literally has a blog (if one can “have” a blog if one only blogs, on average, twice a year), but I want to talk more about Bredesen’s blogger-like self-presentation.  Am I the only one who has noticed that Bredesen runs around the real world acting like it’s his own personal blogosphere?  I’m just thinking about how anyone who hangs around blogs for very long starts to notice that there are certain postures people adopt when blogging and commenting which, though I’m sure designed to make the posturer feel like Mr. McAwesome, leave the rest of us rolling our eyes.

And that, my friends, is how Phil Bredesen appears to be moving through the real world.  You know the characters.  Now let’s see how Bredesen stacks up.

1.  The concern troll. The concern troll is the dude who wants you to take an approach almost completely opposite to the approach you’re taking, an approach that almost certainly would not work and would play into the hands of your opponent, and he frames his suggestion as being just because he cares so deeply for you and your cause that he wants to make sure it doesn’t fail.  See Bredesen’s “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”  (NYTimes)

2.  The “You must respect my vast education” troll.  This is the person who swoops into a conversation, usually full of intellegent people saying smart things, who must, must, must reveal his vast education to everyone so that they will know to take him extra seriously and give him all the respect he’s due.  See Bredesen’s “He needs to come to the aisle of Home Depot and show them that a Harvard graduate — which I am as well — knows how to help them.”  (also NYTimes)

3.  The Completely Unselfaware.  I think that’s pretty self-explanatory.  This is the person who seems unaware that their previous thoughts and actions are still out there for people to see for themselves and judge for themselves.  But in Bredesen’s case, we can see it in the way he runs around touting the great success of TennCare while being responsible for the deaths of people he kicked off it and, even now, is taking legitimate criticism from the likes of Bill Fucking Hobbs, about slashing funding to kids with mental illnesses and cutting funding to people who need 24-hour care.  (Tennessean)

I almost think you could argue that our governor is a Blogger Governor, even if he’s not exactly blogging.

(h/t GoldenI, whose post got me thinking.  Go have some fried ravioli, woman!  You can thank me later.)