Solar Powered Record Players

Better get packing!

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:01:10 +0000

As at time of writing, my passport is somewhere between my hand and the US embassy. One of the members of staff in the visa department of the embassy was a little nonplussed when I asked for my passport back to get home to Scotland. It's my only photo ID, not that we check such papers at the border!

I should get it back in a day or two.

After that... I should be pretty much set to go.

Won't someone think of the animals?

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:29:09 +0000

Once again, I've just read a blogger saying that they will protest PETA's actions by doing the exact opposite of what PETA are trying to change. In other words, I hate what PETA do, so I'm going to go and chow down on this nice, juicy T-bone steak/bucket of chicken/barely cooked piece of pig bum [delete as applicable].

PETAs methods are regressive, publicity-hungry and seriously downright awful. They are squarely aimed at the 18-35 white, heterosexual male demographic, animals be damned. If there's one group who are most responsible for the bacon with everything meme that the internets are awash with, it's the 18-35 white, het men. By my expert (ahem) reckoning, at least. They're not likely to change thier attitudes about food quickly, and possibly not at all when presented with images of naked and nearly-naked women. It might be a cliché to say that in those circumstances, that group aren't exactly thinking about the ethics of the food they eat, as it would require more frontal lobe function than they are capabable of in that circumstance. If you buy into the men think about sex evey 7 seconds ideau that renders them, collectively, unable to function at a higher level when it comes to challenging beliefs and attitudes. Towards, say, the ethics of the food on their plate infront of them.

I am so not a fan of PETAs methods of campaigning for animal rights.

But the cause for which they are campaigning is no less legitimate because they offend people. Animal suffering still needs to be addressed and ended. Read Fast Food Nation - not a lettuce bikini in sight.

Or here's a crazy idea - go veg*an in spite of PETA and their antics. Render them pointless and obsolete; demonstrate that their tactics are outdated and that by appealing to your humanity and empathy instead, they might have got to you, but they failed.

And here's a link to get you started: the Vegan Society.

Oh, how I giggled when I read this

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:15:39 +0000

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?permid=25#comment25

"I've never had a gay person try to recruit me, but I've had many christians attempt that. They knock on my door and accost me on the streets. Even on Sunday mornings, when I just want to sleep, they bang their bells. And they target children on those Sunday mornings. If christians just lived in the closet, I wouldn't mind them so much."

Hurry up and wait

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:47:17 +0000

So... Posting's been very light here, you might have noticed. Sorry about that. Life has reduced down to playing WoW wtih Ken and playing Hello Kitty Online while he's sleeping, with very little else worth mentioning inbetween. I'm on new meds (twice a day! Woohoo!) and they seem to be helping, at least so far. I'm managing to get things done (eventually) and I even venture outside from time to time. Though not so much recently; it's really cold! And there's like 6 inches of frozen snow on the ground. It's cold enough that where it'd normally be slushy by now, like Tesco's car park in Wishaw, it's more like sand. If sand were kind of grubby and really, really cold.

Ken sent me the most wonderful gifts, which happened to arrive on the 24th. He'd made a wooden pendant in the shape of a 45 converter, which I knew about, and a pair of silver earrings in the shape of the Horde crest that I didn't know about. Isn't my husband just amazing? I know!

I had my medical for entry to the US a couple of weeks ago, too. It went fine, I think, though due to the weather Mum and I were stuck in Stansted airport for an extra 19 hours. Yes, we slept on the floor. No, not an experience I'd care to repeat. Especially as some clumsy bugger knocked over his wheelie case and the corner of the handle hit my head so hard I thought the building had exploded. I was nearly asleep at the time, too. The next (and hopefully last) step is another trip to London next week. Hopefully I won't have to spend too many hours sitting in the US embassy with nothing to do, and I will leave with a shiny new addition to my passport. Then it's get packed and go! And I'm not shitting myself. Yet.

And do excuse me, I think I might throw up now...

Some Festive Cheer

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:51:31 +0000

see more Lolcats and funny pictures I am still alive, honest! New meds and other exciting stuffs have been happening. Well, stuffs. Exciting? Maybe next month, when I move to New York...

Sunitha Krishnan's rather awesome TEDtalk

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:56:27 +0000

Those fuckers stay in your head

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:11:57 +0000

The Ravonettes - Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)

Today, I shall mostly be humming this to myself.

Cuz I need a laugh...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:33:19 +0000

Two clips that make me laugh myself breathless... (with thanks to EllaR from Shakesville for tracking down the 3rd Rock one)

3 a week, every week

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:21:57 +0000

Today is International Transgender Day of Rememberance.

There's not a whole lot I can add to what others have already said, and better than I could, so here's Helen talking about why we need to remember, and Ruth about why cis people need to remember, and what we can do to support our trans sisters (and brothers) and chip away at the culture that deems trans people less than, and therefore somehow disposable.

Because, once we've chipped away enough, the whole edifice will crumble.

As darkness falls tonight (or about 4.30pm) I'll be lighting a candle and will take a few minutes to remember the 160 women killed for being themselves, and the unknown others who aren't widely known about. Not that I'm not thinking about them now, but you know... Anyway.

Another reason to be vegan

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:10:02 +0000

Before you press play, I feel that I should point out that this clip pulls no punches and might make you throw up, especiallt if you've just eaten meat.

I need to make a cup of tea...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:10:52 +0000

NaNoWriMo is going slowly. Now, to tidy my desk.

At the end of NaNoWriMo day 3

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:05:08 +0000

6378 words, of which 300 are here!

rotfpmslwtflol

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:50:34 +0000

Women

Women are ultra-impressionable beings, and therefore are easily controlled by aliens and the elite. The main purpose of women on Earth (that is, what aliens have programmed them to do) is to enslave men via relationships. Women are obsessed with relationships and love (due to alien programming), and don't care about anything else in life. They would have men believe that being in a relationship is one of the most important things in existence, not realizing that men couldn't care less about being in a relationship--and rightly so. Furthermore, women force men to waste their precious time and resources on them. This demonic charade (i.e., relationships) has gone on for far too long and obviously has no end in sight. Thus, you can blame women for the downfall and utter hopelessness of humanity.

Make no mistake: It is indeed tragic that a man cannot satisfy his sexual needs without also getting trapped in a relationship at the same time (otherwise, he will be accused of rape, since non-relationship consensual sex does not exist on Earth, due to the aforementioned programming of women). Demonic enslavement traps such as this are the standard modus operandi of the Reptilians and Darkness. Now, just imagine if you had to buy an entire pizza restaurant just to order a pizza--an evil absurdity indeed.

Another thing that makes women insufferable is the fact that they are, essentially, babies. That is, they possess the emotional maturity of a 4-year-old boy. Women cry, throw fits, and need men to take care of them. Um, adults shouldn't need someone else to take care of them.

All in all, women promote the enslavement, rather than the liberation, of humanity. It's bad enough that aliens and the elite already control us. Now, throw women into the equation and you have absolute misery. They are like sheep dogs helping out a shepherd (hence the term "bitch," in case you didn't know).

And to think, women are actually proud of their controlling ways. What a disgrace.

Too much truthiness from truthism.com

The double-think: still burning.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:00:51 +0000

After dashing off yesterday's post, I looked again at the Male. It appears that one of those 3 annual rapes has been reported and I didn't notice. How terribly remiss of me. Now, let me explain the sequence here...

The original story about the poor, innocent lamb who's had to change his name after being acquitted of rape, presumably due to their being reasonable doubt of his guilt (in Daily Male world; falsely accused by a lying, evil, cold-heatered manipulative harpy "crying rape"*) had been updated with a different picture (and again today, as it happens, what gives?) and while glacning at that, I noticed that there were a few other stories involving the crime of rape.

"Six badly decomposed corpses found in convicted rapist's house 'were all women who had been murdered'"
"U.S. air marshal 'raped Navy woman after Heathrow drinking binge'"
"Illegal immigrant rapist escapes security guards while being taken to the toilet"
"Woman who cried rape after sex with man she met online is jailed for nine months"

Isn't it funny how the Male (and it's readers, where they're allowed loose to comment) are quite happy to accept that men who aren't British will commit rape willy-nilly, especially if they aren't white? The two distinctly not-Causcasian men, the convicted rapist in Ohio and the deportee are described as 'monsters' and there's endless mindless drivel about how the man in Cleveland should get the death penalty and how previous prison terms didn't do anything and why was he let out anyway? while there is a suggestion of vigilantism regarding the failed asylum seeker.

But if there's insufficient evidence to prove the difference between consensual sex and rape, of course it didn't happen. The woman's lying! She ought to be locked up for the same amount of time as a convicted rapist! Lying to the police is obviously exactly the same as raping someone! Lying makes it harder for women who really have been raped to get justice! And seeing as about 94% of reports of rape don't end in a conviction, obviously all these women are liars!

Never mind that the woman jailed still says she was raped.

*the more I hear it, the more "cry/ing rape" makes my eyelid twitch. You know the contortions cartoon characters go through when they turn into Hallowe'eny monsters, with the eyes and the jerky limbs? Yeah.

The double-think, it burns.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:45:37 +0000

While procrastinating about NaNoWriMo and avoiding unpacking, I had a look at the Daily Male's website. Always good for a laugh, I find. Not one week goes past when they don't publish a story about women who "cry rape" or about the poor, innocent menz whose lives are destroyed by the heartless, lying harpies. Honestly, if one were to use the Male as an indicator of reality, one would assume that pretty much every man charged with rape didn't do it and that women are just lying all the time and that rape really only happens about 3 times a year.

Anyway. Today's poor, poor man is this guy here. It's not the story so much as the comments. The Male certainly have their readership trained; he was acquitted so therefore he's innocent so therefore it never happened so therefore she lied. And if she was too drunk to consent, well, she obviously did consent and changed her mind in the morning when she regretted it! See these wimmins, daring to have a drink... And, lest we forget, there were no witnesses so why was it even sent to court?!?11!?!!1?/?

Yup, the same Daily Male that is so anti-Muslim it actually seems to be defending Nick Griffin today, appears to have its readers trained to accept Sharia law, when it comes to rape.

The massive leap of logic from 'poor me, I was accused of rape so my life is destroyed' to 'I'll change my name and tell the (sadly) widely-read Mail about it, coz that's a good idea' is head spinning.

Never mind that somewhere there is yet another woman who says she was raped and now faces people thinking she's a liar, and that nearly all women who say they have been raped are lying. MUD STICKS, says dave, a safe distance from hull, and how right he is.

Also; the Daily Male seem to have confused 'falsely accused' with 'acquitted'...