The first came by night and remained through the day, the second has taken up residence in a woodpile near the horse pasture and suns himself daily
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You just never know who will turn up around here...

Well, the VA says they were adjusting my rating. It should have started on the first. It didn't. I hate having to bitch and bitch about this, and whine and complain and crap. How do you fight these bureaucrats? I think the goal here is to strip you of your feeling of dignity so they can get away with more.

If they had fixed me back when I initially started showing symptoms, I'd be well by now, contributing toward society, working again---ah, I'd kill the ride the bus again and wear any polyester uniform at all, thank you-----but now I'm a wreck who hears things that aren't there, sees things that don't exist, and avoids people, even the phone. After years of this, you feel like you've been drained of personality and worth. There's such a knife's edge there, because you're dealing with this surreal situation and you think you are in fact going crazy. How else do you explain hallucinations? That's pretty much the definition of crazy.

I don't know who I am any longer. It's really easy to write, but it's just about impossible to function. It's easy, when you're smart, to put on a good face of it. It's habit; who wants to admit that you feel embarrassed and humbled? I know why soldiers don't want to come forward and admit that this is what they're experiencing. Helping seems less of a priority than balancing the budget. Soldiers are an abstraction, not real people.

You can't really inflict this on civlians, however far you are from active duty. If you can't unsee it, why would you want to put it on someone else's shoulders?

It's a pain in the ass to experience. Frankly, you're no fun to live around during this. I mean, people have been brought up on movie mental illness, where you turn into a sweet, soulful, funny, insightful, tragic, tormented character who Teaches Important Lessons, before dying in a beautiful way that gives the hero or heroine a chance to win an Oscar.

It's especially bad if you're a woman, because you're supposed to live for others, do for others, and do this al behind the scenes. The fact is that women who transgress in some way---bad mothers, not mothers, convicts, the sick, the non-sexually rebellious----are often abandoned. Women are supposed to stand by their man. What goes unsaid, what's kept secret is that ill women are resented, dumped, and have to face a dual burden of illness and ill-treatment. There are approximately 6,500 homeless female veterans of this war. Homelessness is often the worst and final stop on the mental illness ladder. It's bottom. Then, too, homeless women in general are ignored. When the truth is overwhelmingly awful and about women, people just shrug their shoulders and put it down to life. When women get angry about this treatment, they often find the mentally ill label used to stigmatize them.

Miss Havisham. Ophelia. The madwoman in the attic. Mrs. Rochester. The portraits of mentally ill women in literature tend to confirm female roles, and the punishment that comes if you step out of those roles. Female soldiers make us distinctly nervous. While there's lip service to the idea of female strength, the real, unabashed article leaves people nervous. Women do an incredible amount of the world's labor, yet no one praises them for that strength. The undisguised strength of female soldiers is uncomfortably visible and unambiguous. It makes people question roles and notions of courage, honor, selflessness. MOthers are denied the accolade of selflessness and nobility, by the way, as are other women; it's supposed to be biological, which both denies women credit and imprisons them with impossible standards. If you don't meet the standard, you're an unnatural freak; if you do, you're just doing what comes naturally.

Standards for women are high because standards for men are so comfortably---for them---low. There is give and take. The burden falls on women because men do not do their share, and society does not demand it. When women need help, they are whiners, shirkers, malingerers. The resentment against welfare mothers is a perfect example. Mothers are supposed to do all and everyting for their kids, including sacrificing their lives if need be. This is the standard that pre-lifers yearn for. If only those inconvenient women would do their duty and die! This is very much the attitude toward male and female soldiers, especially the wounded who do not express optimism, perkiness, and can-do spirit.

In the last few centuries, for example, there was the myth of the 'fallen' women, a woman who was seduced and abandoned. Despite the injustice of the situation---these seductions were often blatant rapes----society still demanded, if subtly, suicide as the only method of making up for this spoilage. Women who dared survive were reviled, scorned and abandoned, with breathtaking abruptness and thoroughness. I often cite the case of Edith Wilson (or Thompson, sorry; I don't have the book Women Who Kill in front of me. Her case appears in the footnotes.) A lifelong invalid, she was 'seduced' by a friend of her father, who discovered the matter when she became pregnant and turned her out of the house. She was eleven. There was much hand-wringing and colorful ideas for taking care of the offender, but in reality nothing happened to him or them, as there were many of these cases. Sometimes---both then and now---there were colorful and fantastic threats of revenge; burning in hell for centuries, being attacked by wild animals, etc, etc., Of course none of this did any good, nor indeed existed in reality. Men continued to prey on girls and women who were often entirely ignorant of the details of sex, a state that left them completely vulnerable to unscrupulous men. One German-or Austrian, I can't remember---princess was kept so ignorant of sex that she was impregnated by a footman, and subsequently turned out of the house. Friends took her in, but the lesson was clear; no station in life could protect a woman.

The suicide of the seduction victim was self-suttee, an honor killing forced upon the victim by a society that kept her helpless and then turned its back on her when men took advantage of their power. Suicide tidied things up neatly. By killing herself, the victim had provided her family with a tragedy over which they could weep, instead of an inconvenient complication who aroused questions that were literally unthinkable for the thinkers of the day. With her gone, so was any reminder.

The idea that women are a complication and a drain lingers to this day, when a genuinely sick woman like Andrea Yates is villified as the devil, yet men whose only illness is selfishness hurt others and are routinely called 'ill'. The psychiatrist who hinted that Yates was faking by emulating a Law and Order episode--no such episode existed----also professed great sympathy for Jeffrey Dahmer, who did not suffer from post partum psychosis or schizophrenia.

What's interesting is that both male and female soldiers are often regarded in this way: better a flag-draped coffin than a living, complex, and often angry veteran. What a drag. Better a tragedy than a complication, and it's all compounded when the veteran is a woman, who is probably not doing her husband's laundry while she mopes and snivels. Men are tragic; women are prone to hysteria. Both do suffer from that curious dismissal, though, as if they were servants or wives or other people who are supposed to make someone else's life easier. I once read an article about how men resented hearing about the sheer effort women put into meeting the appearance standards that the very same men demanded of them. Not only did they want her to be gorgeous, they didn't want the guilt of inspiring all that work, either. So it appears to be the case today, where the American public wants soldiers to do their bidding, yet doesn't want to hear about the cost in any great detail. That's the work of a certain class. The resentment is very much the attitude of the person who discovers that those who serve are also those who know their worth. That wasn't supposed to be part of the deal. You're supposed to work round the clock, then disappear when not needed, grateful and humble for scraps from the table.

Which is why maybe soldiers like me, especially women, are often greeted with sadistic gloating when we crumble. At last that self worth and confidence built up by the years of service and work and adventure has been broken! Mission accomplished, indeed. Aren't you supposed to kill yourself? What a shame Al Qaeda didn't succeed. Now why don't you go away, find a bridge to disappear under, and leave us all to our yellow ribbons and our Memorial Day barbecues?

I linked to an alternet story a few days ago about a woman who had to abort her twins late in pregnancy due to pre-eclampsia. Well, the forced-birthers, the pre-lifers, the vagina monitors, are at it on Digg. Here we go! This is Lalabelle, or LuluBelle, or whoever gives a fuck, because GODDAMN I hate these lying fuckers so much I wish it were Tuesday, nausea or no. Who's with me for a little expedition on Tuesday? Ahem.

1) The condition to which you are referring is Anencephaly, not spina bifida.

This was in reference to a woman talking about a pregnancy her grandmother witnessed.

Many, many women now find out that there child has Anencephaly, and they choose to continue with the pregnancy, knowing that they may or may not get to hold their child for very long after the birth.

Er, actually, no, you little murdering assholes did away with that option when you pushed to outlaw something you insisted on calling 'the partial birth abortion', which represented the safest, least damaging way of delivering a relatively intact fetus for the mother and father to hold. It's actually called dilation and extraction, you ignorant cow. Or---- bull? Boar seems more appropriate in this case, because one can just picture a groteque, snuffling woman-hating anti-choicer squealing about those evil women while he types this.

They choose to give their baby a chance to be born, and they choose to give themselves the chance of knowing their child outside the womb, even for a short period of time.

Whatever they choose to do, it's their choice, you arrogant, God-usurping heretic.
Does this include cases of sepsis? Fetal death? Pre-eclampsia? Also, HOW MUCH do I love it when somebody pulls the word 'many' out of their ass, which in this case wasn't enough, so she had to add another one and then..some platitudes. Nothing. Nothing referencing a cite, a statistic, peer-review, just the anti-choice version of, "And then she heard this scraping noise on the car door....." Notice, too, that there's no illness, no danger to the mother, nothing. Lots of these scumbags deny entirely and completely the notion that there's any danger to pregnancy at all.

A woman I met through the internet chose to keep her Anencephalic child alive.

Was this Hope Faith, the headless wonder child, whose mother was something of a scary crusader for teh baybeez? I mean, the mother had to keep taping the kid's eyes in because otherwise they'd fall out. And she had to pull the little knit hats down to the kid's eyebrows because....because there was no skull above her eyebrows, if that! I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the woman hadn't so aggressively pimped the kid out as the poster child for making other women feel guilty. Also, wasn't there some kind of scandal with the babydaddy? Like, he was married? Anyhoo, she met this lady on the Internet, which is trufax! I just hope it wasn't that woman who used a doll as the stand in for her non-existant pregnancy.

Doctors, family members and strangers attacked her time and again, telling her she was stupid to keep her child alive in her womb. (So much for choice, eh?)

OMG, those evil pro-choicers! Hahaha! It sounds just like anti-choice propaganda. The only thing that's missing is the evil doctor making piles of money off the abortion. IN fact, the anti-choice movement has a thirty-year history of stalking, threats, murder, terrorist attacks, numerous terrorist acts, and harassment. Somebody's doing some serious projection.

They told her that her daughter would die an agonizing death minutes after she was born.

That's because that's what usually happens. Frankly, I wouldn't trust a pre-lifer if they said water was---Well, actually, these people would probably call the ocean 'dry.'

Instead, the baby lived and grew for three months before peacefully passing away.

OMG, REALLY? NO WAI! That's funny. When you read actual non-propaganda accounts of the lives of these unfortunate children, the lives are described as agonizing. It's not like the kid can articulate what they're experiencing, but one woman whose story I read talked about how her daughter would scream when she was touched.

This baby's mother will never, ever regret the time she had with her baby. She was never traumatized by changing the bandages on her daughter's head, much less seeing her baby emerge from the womb.

How do you know, anyway? Frankly, I've read that woman's blog and she sounds a little off to me.

Instead, she enjoyed three months (not three minutes) of watching her daughter grow, hearing her coo, seeing her smile, and rocking her to sleep.

Yeah, an unbiased source, I'm sure. I bet you thought Terri Schiavo was alive, too. After all, you had an affair with a scumbag street preacher who was married, you got pregnant, and the kid was horribly deformed and died. Denial is often a mechanism to spare people pain. However, given the smugness of this woman's propaganda, I'm reserving the right to be skeptical

Choosing to end the life of a "deformed" newborn is not a matter of "saving" mothers from being traumatized. It gives them the opportunity to do something selfish and traumatizing to the CHILD to save themselves the hardships that life presents to people every single day.

AND here we go! Those whores! It's only missing half its skull and all of its brain and it's in agonizing pain or it already died in utero! Tough it out so some busybody online will think slightly more of you! And going through nine months of pregnancy only to face tragedy at the end is just the breaks. Besides, you probably asked for it, you slut. It's no big deal. It's not like you matter, anyway.

2) I personally know someone who battled aggressive cancer during her pregnancy. Both she and her child are doing exceptionally well. No killing of a viable human being necessary. Amazing, huh?
It'd be amazing if there were any proof at all, but...no. But how convenient that this anonymous imaginary woman just happened to neatly contradict medical facts! And how fucking annoying are these chirpy little questions she asks, too? Sounds like she doubts her own lies.

3) A late term abortion is procedure that some do when they decide it's medically necessary to end a human life. However, the abuse of the procedure is seen time and again by people like that douche bag Tiller.

Oh, it's ON NOW, MOTHERFUCKER! God, WHAT do you call that? You stalked the guy for decades, wounded him, slandered him, harassed him, murdered him, and now when he can't defend himself, you attack him with more lies? GREAT WAY to promote your cause, scumbags. The compassion----it just shines right through the claws and the fangs.

It is unbelievably ignorant to assume that late term abortions are done only when the mother is at risk or the baby is severely handicapped.

It's not an assumption, it's medical fact. It is impossible to get a late-term abortion in this country for anything but medical necessity. Late term abortions make up less than 1% of all abortions performed in this country. Dr. Tiller always consulted with at least one other doctor.

In addition, it is also COMMON for tests and ultrasounds to provide incorrect results.

Spoken like somebody who knows whereof they speak, because they've been feeding women lies for years. Somebody's been working at a crisis pregnancy center, I think.

There are countless women who have come forward saying that their doctors urged them to abort their "imperfect" child, only to have their baby born without any problems at all, or problems that are exceptionally less severe than the doctor announced.

Oh, yeah, really? Where? And how about those doctors! They just love the abortions! I bet this moron has some really disgusting sexual fantasies about abortion, frankly.

Dear Pre-lifers:

Lying makes you look like the murdering, woman-hating assholes you are. And you're not even trying to hide it.

I'll wait while you go look it up yourself.

Yeah, somebody developed artificial sperm out of stem cells. There'll be an explosion of whining and shit from the sort of men who have nothing to offer but sperm, then an outbreak of laugher. "Here's some sperm, honey." Gah. Yeah, that's....nice. Thanks. Next time, get me a card.

Remind me again how feminists hate men? Because it's taken as a given by these guys that all women want from men is sperm and all men have to offer is sperm. Except for Rush Limbaugh. I'd love it if he offered an absence, but no such luck so far.

Position: pharmacist
Duties: Dispensing medication, as ordered by doctor.

Jesus fucking Christ, how hard is that to understand?

Nope, instead, we have fundies---mostly male, but some female---training for jobs as pharmacists, getting hired, and then finally mentioning that, oh, they have this teensy problem with birth control pills, emergency birth control, etc., etc., and if you don't let them make decisions about womens' bodies you're infringing on their religious freedom. This is one of those fundie logic problems where their logic appears to be: I get to control everybody's life. The end.

Make no mistake: these guys are not innocently wandering into this and then discovering oh noes that they have to dispense birth control. This is another grass roots effort by the pre-life movement, to attack birth control. If there are any wingnuts reading this: this is what a special right looks like, asshole. These guys want to take a job under false pretenses, then not do the job, and yet get to keep the job, taking money for not doing their job.

Now, in real life, actions as a result of beliefs have consequences, as these guys constantly point out in their busy day of blaming rape victims, single mothers, gays, blacks, minorities, etc., etc., for the various acts that bigots like Our Heroes love to perpetrate on anybody who's not straight white, and male. When the consequences happen to them, however, the fundies scream and kick their heels. This time, the court told them tough luck, do your job, or get fired for cause.

Brought to you, of course, by bonobochick

Black kids go to a pool and get told they'll----I am NOT making this up----they'll 'change the complexion of the pool'---and told to leave. All the white kids got out of the pool when the black kids showed up.

Dear assholes: I guess the upside here is that you're going to get soundly smacked, but...but....So much for the whole, "But we have a black president! Racism is over!" Yeah, because racism ended when Condi Rice was Secretary of State, too.

As blunt and ugly as this is, this is only one case. What else are we missing because reporting racism is just such a downer for the media? (Unless there's a white hero who solves things.) Racists have never been subtle; this sort of thing never ended, even though reporting it has dropped off.

Marvel at those white kids! If that's the way they behave in public, what are they being taught in private?

Yeah, stop and consider that for a while. To a guy who thinks his wife is just property, do you think your daughter is safe? Do I have to point out that guys like this endanger men and those they love? Why do I have to keep pointing this out over and over? How many men have that coworker who makes sexist jokes at work, boasts about sexual conquests, talks about his exes in terms of what bitches they are? Why do I have to? Can't you guys figure it out? Or doesn't it matter unless it hurts you personally? Does loyalty to the male fraternity matter more than humanity? Or are the losses around you so easy to dismiss?

Well, this is what happens. Your daughter is not your possession or your creation. She is a whole person, and if you let other men rampage freely, you can play a part in her murder. When does it matter?

It's a heart-wrenching story of a woman pregnant with twins, who found out she would die from pre-eclampsia if she continued the pregnancy. One twin had already died, and there was no way to save the other that didn't involve killing her.

In the comments, one asshole says that of the records of Dr. Tiller's patients, not one was to save the woman's life, all were for psychological reasons, and one patient had to be rushed to the hospital after he botched an abortion on her. So there! Except....How did he get those records, huh? Oh, that's right, he couldn't have. HIPPA and all that. So: another pre-lifer caught lying, and lying outrageously.

Still, it's useful to take note of this stuff, because this is what they do. Period. There's no common ground with liars.

Melissa McEwan picked this up. Now that the Dems have the majority in the house, could it be that they're finally leading somewhere? Liss notes that this calls Obama's bluff. It also would put a nail in the coffin of conservative resistance to gay marriage. After all, if people can serve why can't they marry?

Massachusetts' Attorney General has filed suit because there are too many rights conferred by marriage to leave it up to the States to have a mess of rights and contradictions. As Liss says, this is inevitable.

I guess it's about time. lol
Heading off to Pottersville, NY to visit my daughter. This is her third year working up at camp. This year she has opted to work housekeeping instead of food line. Claims it's because she is 16 now and would have to get up an hour earlier, because they can work you longer at that age. lol I think she works harder in housekeeping, though. Good for what ails you.

Maybe I can keep up with this at least once a week. This past year has been hard. I'm hoping the worst is behind us and maybe now I can decipher it all.

I better get going...Three hour drive ahead of me.

Dammit, miz_evolution tapped me for this and I'm trying to remember what it is till the end of the sentence! Three things I'm grateful for, then three people who inspire me.

1. My friends. I just wish you all lived closer. I love you guys. I love how you're funny and brave and brash and....in various parts of the country.

2. Sleep. Yeah.....

3. Cats. They cuddle, they purr, and in Morgie's case, they steal my underwear, sleep on it, and then contrive to look innocent. Also, Ebony is one of those cats who keeps trying to bonk her way through a glass window.

I guess I'm limited to three things, huh?

You guys are an inspiration and a support to me, so I'm not going to pick just one. If you want to play, go ahead.

Just don't put 'ass crack' on the list, okay? Yuck.

Guys, pecunium needs help. Give him a hand if you can.

1. Moron: You know, when you see me coming and you shout, "Why are you here?! You live a block away!" stop and think. Considering your stereo is so fucking loud that it reduced your shouts to lip movements, think.

2. I realize that thinking might not be your strong suit.

3. It is deeply pathetic to see some fifty plus motherfucker trotting about dressed like a scrawny little LA gangbanger. Seriously, dude, pull up your pants. Or at least put on some boxers underneath them. Whatever. You are not a teenager. Why in fuck are people so worried about young black mens' asses and girls' thongs? You really want to do a public service, police up the sweaty pasty white dudes with plumber's crack.

4. The cops are wearing polyester uniforms and flak vests. They do not want to get out of their air-conditioned cars. The likelihood of you successfully pressing a harassment complaint against me is laughable.

5. If lesbianism were optional, you would be its inspiration.

6. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. That means that if anybody had the choice of picking a gender that didn't include you.....Oh, shit too many syllables.

7. In short, suck my tampon, you unwashed, justifiably-insecure, loud, dickless, aging badly middle-aged adolescent.

To add to the weirdness, this pasty white fifty something dude is listening to the worst misogynistic rap you can imagine. Yeah. Way to go there, moron.

Let's guess who he voted for in this eleciton, shall we?

Did I mention the vehicle in question is a big fat shiny SUV with flashy rims? The garage attached to his house burned down, leaving him with a house with melted siding hanging off it in loops and strings, but he's blowing his money on loud stereos and rims. The middle-aged mid-life crisis is a thing to behold.

God. C is missing. She went to a friend's house, then they took off, and now T doesn't know where she is. The kid does this all the time. T called the cops.

I really, really hope she's okay, and that she's going to get the spanking of her life. This kid once tried to wander off to Wisconsin.

ETA: 1930: kid's found. As expected, she wandered off without telling anybody.

In addition to being a whiner who cries out that he's 'being treated like a murderer!'---no, I am not making that up----Scott Roeder is also distributing hate literature from behind bars.

Now, imagine, say, if this guy's name was Abdul Mohamed, what would happen at this point? Scott Roeder is spreading the 'message' of the Army of God, an organization on the FBI's terrorist watch list, as well as that of Paul Hill---who murdered Dr. John Barret and his escort James Britten----and Eric Robert Rudolph, whose bombs killed one person at the Atlanta Olympics, as well as at least person at an abortion clinic. The man who died at the latter attack, by the way, was pro-life, but he believed that women had the right to do what they wanted to with their bodies. He was an off-duty cop providing security for the women who sought help at that clinic. Maybe that's why it's so important that these mythical 'pro-lifers' who claim they're so pro-choice speak out. It takes one terrorist to kill and hurt; how many people does it take to stop one? We'll never know, because there's been no convincing, nationwide uprising against these assholes. Nobody stopped Paul Hill while he was spewing hate in front of abortion clinics and Planned Parenthoods. Whole communities egged on and supported Eric Robert Rudolph. Others are simply silent because they agree. The result is the death of people who help women. It's that simple.

Scott Roeder is a terrorist who hates women and their rights, and so are the people who help him and agree with him. Silence is assent. Silence helps only the bully, not the bullied, and neutrality is impossible when one side is evil. You cannot be neutral except where the sides are evenly-matched; that is why things like, say, 'equalism' instead of feminism are a dodge and an intellectual feint, because the field is not level, men and women do not have equality yet, and to help the unequal merely preserves the inequality.

Two frames I pulled out of one of my storm videos. They're taken one frame apart.

Note the purple lightning slash at the right side of the picture in the first one. There's also a bit of a tongue of it reaching down to the house's roof, in the center top. No lights on in the house.




Next frame, nothing moves, but the lightning is gone. The question is, though...what was going on there? Did it move through that house? The whole street is lit up by lightning...splash, I guess.