Being Amber Rhea

This morning I find myself fighting off the symptoms of the depression I’ve lived with for nearly two decades now.

I need to resolve, once and for all, FOR REAL, to stop going to things that make me feel like I have to act like someone I’m not in order to be accepted.

I need to stop thinking, “Maybe this time it’ll be different from the five thousand other times when it was all the same.”

When I lived in Texas, my ex told me I wouldn’t meet people if I just sat at home all the time. She said this very derisively. She said I had to “go out” if I wanted to meet people.

My closest friends, who really know me and care about me and love me, never say things like this. I know a red flag when I see it.

Never mind that that’s not in my nature, and I argued, what’s the point in forcing myself to do something that I wouldn’t naturally do only in the name of “meeting people?” I’ll just end up meeting people who I don’t really mesh with on anything more than a very superficial level.

But I tried it. I took a ceramics class. I went to a “new in town” meet-up. I went to a party thrown by a coworker’s coworker (yes this makes sense, just trust me). All of these things sucked.

And what happened when I moved to Atlanta? Sitting around at home is EXACTLY how I met people - and that translated into GOING OUT and spending time with the people I met, in real life. Thanks to blogs, I met: Jen, Thomas, Nikki, Alyssa, Joseph, BJ, Sherry, Grayson, of course Rusty, and many more, too numerous to list. And thanks to them I met people they knew - and on and on it went. I already knew a few people from grad school (Garrett, Josh, Mary, etc.) so that helped as well. And thanks to sitting around at home reading blogs, I reconnected with Dacia after four years and with Dipika after nearly ten years.

When my ex said, after I’d moved back to Atlanta and started hanging out with bloggers IRL, “I think you take this blog thing a little too seriously” - that was another big red flag.

This morning Rusty said you can’t have the same expectations of things like the tweet-up as you can with your friends, because those people won’t act like your friends, because they’re strangers. But if that’s true then why did I never get this feeling of having to be someone I’m not when I went to the very first blogger trivia night before I had ever met Rusty, Jen, Nikki, Thomas, Tony Simon, Joseph, Mae and whoever else was there in person before? Why did I never get that feeling from any of them at any of the get-togethers we had, even when I didn’t know them on more than a very casual basis? And why would I stick around hoping that the people who I am getting a bad feeling from will suddenly change their tune after they know me? What does that say about them if they act so completely different around a “stranger” versus a friend?

These are rhetorical questions, of course, but once again it all comes back to trusting my intuition. Whenever I trust my intuition, things go well; and when I ignore it and think, “Well, maybe that’s not fair… maybe this will be different, I just need to give it a chance…” things go poorly. I should know this by now. I do know this by now. And yet I keep fucking it up! I need to stop that, for real this time. Let’s call this an early New Year’s Resolution for 2009.

There’s nothing wrong with who I am, the way I am. I was tempted to say last night made me feel like a loser, but that’s not entirely accurate. I do not believe that I’m a loser, at all. But certain environments make me feel like I’m being put into a box and that if I don’t act differently than my true self, then I’m not wanted. If I don’t make a good prop then I might as well go away.

I should know all too well by now that I don’t need to give people the time of day who have a problem with who I am. So now I just need to stick to my guns and not let the self-doubt creep in. I keep coming back to what Dacia said on Twitter a few days ago (can’t find the actual quote now), something like, “I just hate feeling like my personality isn’t a good way to be.”

Too bad I don’t have any Klonopin here at work because I might need it today, just to get back on my feet after reeling a bit from last night and wondering if anyone understands. I felt very alone and I tried to talk to Rusty before I went to bed but I still didn’t feel 100% better. I can’t let this get me down. I need to remember that the people who really matter do understand. That truth is what I need to stay focused on.

—
* You know what, it’s more than good, it’s GREAT. The power of self-talk, right?

Update: Taking a quick glance into my archive, I see that I wrote about this very topic five years ago almost to the date, when I was living in Texas and feeling that pressure I mentioned above. I really need to listen to myself!

I didn’t have a particularly “crazy night” or anything, but I just wanted to record what I was doing, because I want to be able to refer back to it years from now and remember.

All I remember from election night in 2000 - the first Presidential election I was able to vote in - was sitting on the floor of the living room with C., mouth agape. We were both just staring at the screen going, “What. The. FUCK??!!!” And I was feeling increasingly regretful about writing in Nader.

In 2004, I was in my apartment, having another what the fuck moment, as you already know.

Last night we went to the DPG party at the Hyatt. I had a suspicion it would end up being just like every other party I don’t like being at - loud, too crowded/packed, lots of drunk people. But I figured I’d give it a chance because I had never been to an election night party. Well, that’s pretty much how it ended up being - but I’m not saying it sucked; Rusty and I ended up hanging out in a corner of the Red Clay Democrats’ hospitality suite with Jen, Tony, Joseph, and BJ (which is who I’d be hanging out with regardless) which was fine by me. We briefly saw Catherine and Jerry in the hotel bar before the official party started; Grayson was there but we never found her; Sara and James apparently showed up later, past my bedtime. Jen mentioned that she should’ve just had a returns-watching party at her house. Live and learn!

At one point someone said something about “now that we’re older” - but you know, I just want to point out that those kinds of statements frustrate me and make me feel kinda, I don’t know, erased (too strong a word but I can’t think of another one right now). Because that’s not accurate for me. It’s not about age, for me. I was never someone who went to parties or liked to stay up all night and get drunk and whatnot. That’s not who I am and it never was - and there’s nothing wrong with that. Or like Dacia said on Twitter today, “I just hate feeling like my personality is not a good way to be.”

But that was a tangent… back to the recap! By around 10:30 I was getting pretty tired, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of updates on who was winning, so Rusty and I decided to take a cab home. When we got home, I got in the shower; I was almost done with my shower when Rusty knocked on the bathroom door and shouted, “He won!” I was shocked! I mean, just like that? So soon? Amazing! I had thought it might be morning before we’d know anything. Then Rusty shouted that McCain was about to concede. I got out of the shower and listened to the first part of McCain’s speech while I was still toweling off, then came out to the living room to watch the rest. It was the best speech he gave the entire campaign. :P (My grandmother said that when I talked to her today, too!)

I could hardly believe it! I mean, I’d had a pretty strong feeling that Obama would win, but still I had that feeling of trepidation lurking under the surface - you just never know. And now it was actually happening! It was official. I was just… blown away.

We stayed up to watch Obama’s speech and then we went to bed. Kind of anti-climactic maybe, but that was our night. But I went to bed with a renewed sense of HOPE!

Here are a few photos from last night…

Me as a candy corn witch:

Rusty as “the shocker:”

Us at Lisa’s party:

Hand-painted back of the “Caribou Barbie” box that the Sarah Palin look-alike had for herself. Also the winning costume of the party. This one is best viewed large, so click through to Flickr and click “All Sizes” above the photo.

Kitty litter cake, the winning entry in the “spooky snacks” contest (half eaten… wish I had gotten a photo before it had been cut into):

And, pole dancing, of course:

More here.

I wish I had thought to take photos at Jen’s party, too. There were some great costumes. In particular I liked “First Dude.”

I’m usually not that into Halloween, but last night was really fun!

Also - I am in the process of uploading the photos from my birthday shoot at the abandoned prison, and will post a few of them soon.

Elizabeth Wood has a new article published in the journal Feminism and Psychology, entitled “Consciousness-raising 2.0: Sex Blogging and the Creation of a Feminist Sex Commons.” It touches on many of the issues she raised at Sex 2.0 in her session Creating the Sex Commons.

I just can’t say enough good things about Elizabeth. I have so much effing respect for her. I wish that I had a subscription to the journal so that I could read the full article, but I’m sure it’s amazing, like the rest of her work.

At Sexerati, Melissa has an excellent response piece. Quotage:

[I]f the feminist marketplace of ideas cannot support a true diversity of sexual theory, and neither can the mainstream, then maybe blogging is a wonderful, messy middleground. Personal sex blogging may be (hopelessly?) marginalized to the hoary Blogspots of the the web, but within every Penthousey story, there can still be an ethic of truth-telling. That ethic isn’t too different from our original feminist sex rebellion: against the over-medicalization and patholgization of women’s sexuality, and in favor of the multiplicity of bodies, genders, desires, and pleasures we ought to have the right to.

Following the publication of the article, Elizabeth is asking for input from sex bloggers:

want to add the kind of richness that more examples from blogs would give it. So I am asking you who read here and who contribute to the sex commons by writing your own personal sex narratives, in the spirit of collaborative publishing and participatory research: If you have a post that you think does an especially interesting job of articulating desire, of describing stigmatized sex in shameless ways, of extending a sense of sexual community, please let me know about it. Leave a link in the comments, or email me a link (elizabeth at sexinthepublicsquare dot org.

See her post at Sex in the Public Square for more details, and consider sharing some of your own writing. I’ve been looking through my archives trying to find something that really fits her criteria and have been dismayed that so far I’ve come up empty-handed. I guess this means I need to write more about actual fucking!

So by now you’ve probably heard about seemingly everyone in the freakin’ world getting canned (or voluntarily leaving due to “circumstances”).

Dacia wrote about it the other day and included a master list of sorts. Let us also not forget Regina Lynn leaving Wired, and Playboy Radio putting the kibosh on her Sex in the News segment. And you could really say it all started nearly two years ago, when the Village Voice killed Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Lusty Lady” column.

In particular, it was really bizarre to hear about Melissa being laid off from Valleywag, because just a day or two before that, I’d heard about Tristan’s Village Voice column being axed, and as Rusty and I were walking from the MARTA station to work, I said something like, “It seems like the only one who still has a job is Melissa, at Valleywag.” Then Rusty said something about all of us starting a site together and how awesome that would be.

Ahem.

Dacia isn’t so worked up about the idea of starting a new site - and neither am I, honestly. Admittedly, after hearing about all the latest news, I did say this on Twitter (tweets listed in reverse chronological order, for those not on the bandwagon):
Read the full post »

So this girl was giving me a hard time, ostensibly in a friendly way, about how I wear “baggy clothes” and therefore she didn’t know I had “such a nice body” until she saw my pole dancing videos on YouTube. I should’ve said something to her at the time - and there is a slim but existent chance that she may read this, and I’m okay with that - but I haven’t had the energy for confrontation lately, especially with her, because she’s been such a good friend in so many other ways since my dad’s death. When I look at it objectively it’s a rather minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things. But she just kept going ON and ON about it, telling me things like I need to wear a small not a medium (um, sometimes I do; sizes vary, after all), and you know, at a certain point, it grates. Badly.

And she isn’t the first to do this. Not at all - she just took it further than most people have. I mean, even Rusty said I have “stealth tits” (not mad at him about that; but just saying). People say they’re surprised, as if my measurements snuck up on them, because I “don’t wear tight clothes” (their words). This girl in particular was the first in a while (if ever; I really don’t know) to actually say “baggy clothes.” It got to the point with her where even though I knew she was trying to be complimentary, it was starting to make me feel like I was in middle school all over again, being critiqued about what’s not good enough about me.

And anyway, give me a break! First of all, I don’t think I wear baggy clothes. No, I don’t wear skin-tight clothes, either; but you know why? Because it’s not comfortable to me, especially when it’s HOT out, like it happens to be right now in mid-summer Georgia.

I think the next time I talk to this girl, if she brings it up, I’m going to say something like, “I appreciate your compliments about my figure, but I dress the way I want to dress and the subject is not open for debate.” If I have the energy, that is. I’ll probably be talking to her after work today, so we’ll see if she mentions it. Hopefully she won’t and that’ll be that.

I realize I haven’t put up a real blog post in a week. In a way that feels like ages ago, in another way it feels like mere minutes ago. Same as always; I won’t go off on the tired old babbling about the subjective, convoluted nature of time.

So much to say but I don’t even know where to start. I’ve had trouble falling asleep all week, and many nights I’ve written ridiculously long blog posts in my head as I lay awake in the dark. I’ve also been drinking too much sweet tea over the past few days, left over from Tuesday’s catering from Wife Saver; but I know my fitful sleep is attributable to far more than just extra caffeine.

If I’d had any forethought (but how could I have?) I would’ve brought my old-school paper journal with me to Chicago, meaning I’d have it here with me now, and I could be scribbling in it whenever the spirit moves. I know I’ll be doing a fair amount of that when I get home. And I also know I need to do more writing here, and it needs to come from the gut, without a filter; I guess death always makes you reassess things and realize, starkly, how short and fleeting life can be. So I need to write here for the reason I started this blog: for ME. I need to write in MY style, which admittedly others won’t always grok. But that’s okay. Because it’s not about them. And all of this has made me feel like I can do it, must do it, write for my life, without worrying about who I might piss off or what some nebulous “they” might think.

It feels weird to know that I’m going home tomorrow. It’s been over a week since I’ve been home, slept in my own bed, seen my finches, watched my Tivo, sat at my desk… it’s been over two weeks since I’ve been to work. I know getting back into the swing of things will feel good. But like I said, it also just feels weird. Everything has felt so surreal this week. I feel like things are in a state of suspended animation and I’m moving in slow motion… that’s the best way I can describe it, and even that is not totally accurate. I don’t know when I’ll come out of this state. I do know that the old truism about never knowing how a traumatic event will affect you until you’re actually dealing with it is right on.

I’ve had nightmares almost every night I’ve been here (when I’ve been able to remember my dreams at all, that is). And yet I’ve stayed in bed until late morning whenever possible, until my back hurts and my shoulders are screaming for a massage, because the lethargy is just too great to overcome. Really the only thing that forces me out of bed is having to pee.

One weird thing that’s happened while I was here: my mom’s AC literally froze. As in, the AC repair guy came out to look at it and said it had turned into a block of ice. We ran the fan for a full day in order to thaw it out (it’s back to normal now). I’d never heard of anything like that!

—

Chicago, Tuesday, July 17th, around 9:00 p.m.: phone call from my mom. I had been waiting for a call and I knew it wouldn’t be good. And I guess maybe part of me knew exactly how not good (or good, depending on how you look at it; he was suffering a lot, after all) it would be. Dacia and I were walking down Belmont looking for food. I stepped into an alleyway so I could hear my mom better. She sounded quiet and deflated, like she had been crying but wasn’t crying at that moment.

“Hi Amber. Well… Dad died.”

What could I say but, after a big gulp of air, “Okay. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

We talked for a few more minutes. I don’t remember what all she said. I do remember he passed away at 8:20 p.m., and about six people were in the room with him at the time.

I told Dacia. We hugged. We stood there. She asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “I know it sounds bad, but I want to eat dinner.”

She rubbed my back and said, “That’s what you do when you’re alive. You eat.”

—

Thanks, Dorie, for looking after our finches.

More posting to come, either really soon or not.

Geez, that Balticon/Baltimore post is never going to be finished, is it? I should just admit it. It’s been over a week now FFS.

Anyway, here are some photos instead:

The Baltimore light rail uses the same system as the MARTA Breeze machines.

Showing off my Balticon program participant badge.

Rusty and me at the 80s party. Photo by Regina Lynn. We didn’t look nearly as bitchin’ as she did. In fact, we didn’t dress up at all, but at the last minute Regina encouraged us to make do with popped collars and tight-rolled jeans.

Downtown Baltimore. One day, I will go back, so that I can visit all the museums I didn’t get a chance to visit this time around: Public Works (we got there at 3:45 but they closed at 4:00!), Dentistry, Urology, and Historical Electronics.

Jenny demonstrates the shortness of doorways in Little Italy.

Public Comfort Station. This is my new favorite euphemism. It took me a few seconds to realize what it was when I first saw it.

No idea what this was, but we stumbled upon it and obviously had to take a picture.

The audio from three of the panels I was on at Balticon is now up, as well:

• Erotic Podcasts and Sexy New Media
• Don’t Be That Guy - Advice From the Women of New Media
• So You Want to be a Sex Podcaster?

Of course, this weekend we were in Columbus and other small Georgia towns. Video forthcoming… Rusty is quite the video artist!

Me, I’m feeling sick and hoping I’ll feel well enough to make it to pole dancing class tonight. :\

This one comes from Jenny, via IM, regarding a real-life concern troll right here in my office:

you COULD do damn near anything you wanted to
but this is not 1820 and we live in a service economy

I literally LOLed. :)

In the comments a few posts down, valeko asked whytf he should care about Twitter. I started writing a comment in reply, but it got long, so I figured I’d just make a separate post.

I was anti-Twitter until I learned more about it and, then, started using it. One area where I see it being really useful is in telling your friends where you are, so they can come meet you if they want. Like when Rusty and I go out, one of us will Twitter (for example), “At Manuel’s.” You can also use it to tell people if you’re running late! Of course, this assumes that everyone uses the SMS feature; personally I just use it on the computer (for now, anyway).

Twitter proved very useful at large events such as SXSW, SoCon07, PodCamp Atlanta, and PodCamp NYC, where there were a lot of people scattered in various places. For example, at PodCamp NYC, lost-and-found items were Twittered. I lost a card reader, and a guy sent out a tweet saying, “If you find an SD card reader bring it to the help desk.” (No one ever found it, but still, cool usage. Someone else did retrieve their lost iRiver that way, though.)

Another use… up to the minute news updates. CNN uses it for that. But on a non-MSM level - just think of the tweets that were going out during the VA Tech crisis, for example. Look up NewMediaJim’s tweets from last week… it’s fascinating stuff.

Also, Twitter just appeals to my voyeuristic side - and I think most people have that streak in them, to an extent. Especially when it’s friends or people you at least know (or know of) IRL. It’s just interesting, to me, to see what they’re doing! Very much like blogging, in that regard.

Most recently, Rusty and I had fun asking and answering questions via Twitter while we recorded a podcast. We plan to make this a regular feature on our show.

What about the rest of you, blog readers? Why do you like (or dislike) Twitter?

Holy crap - Dacia is going to be on Geraldo at Large tonight! It airs at 8:00 p.m. on Fox News. (Yes, I will willingly be watching Fox News! Stranger things have happened.) I assume they’ll be discussing her book Naked on the Internet. If Geraldo is mean to her I’m going to fly to wherever he is and personally kick his ass - so consider yourself warned, Mr. Moustache.

I will Tivo it, of course. I wonder if there’s a way to get it from there to YouTube?

Update: Actually it won’t be on tonight. See comment for details.

I have a lot of stuff I want to write about, but I have very little free time currently… but, also, I keep getting struck with those “OH WHY ARE WE HERE” moments lately. As I’ve said before, I don’t like that. The whole thing makes me feel weird.

And, there are things I want to say but I’m afraid I won’t be able to express them correctly. Maybe I should do a Pondering Existential Questions (And Other Really Deep Things) edition of Mostly ITP.

Also, I wish Jenny and Niki lived closer. Fuck the snow! Come to Atlanta. (We had a little bit of snow this morning, but never you mind that.)

*sigh* Substantive post later, perhaps. In the meantime, peruse my del.icio.us links. That’s where the good stuff is.

Here are some photos from Thanksgiving 1998. I was 19, and Jenny and Niki were 18. So young and innocent! (Well, young anyway.)

Jenny and I waiting at the bus stop after buying Thanksgiving provisions

Niki and Jenny preparing the feast

Jenny, Niki, and I at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport

How time flies. I love you ladies!

Today was a pretty low-key Thanksgiving, which is fine by me. Unfortunately Rusty is sick, so that’s part of what contributed to the low-keyness. Looks like he either finally picked up what I had two weeks ago, or has caught something else. So I’m taking care of him, and hoping he’ll be better soon!

Reminiscing about Thanksgivings past, I have to say my fondest memory is definitely Thanksgiving 1998, when Niki and I spent a few days with Jenny at the nearly-deserted Hamline University. (This was our first semester of college.) We had some adventures, including trekking to a restaurant that turned out not to exist (in search of Thanksgiving dinner), finally buying our own provisions at a grocery store, waiting for a bus that never came… and so on. I was going to scan some photos from that night and put them up, but I can’t find the power cable for my scanner, and I don’t want to disturb Rusty (he’s sleeping) by looking for his in his apartment. So maybe I will scan those photos tomorrow.

I can hardly believe that was 8 years ago. -Okay, well, I can believe it. It’s just weird, you know? That same old refrain: in some ways it feels like not all that long ago, but in some ways it feels like ages ago.

So if I’m supposed to do a “what I’m thankful for” post, then I am far and away most thankful for the GDBF and my amazing friends. I wish Jenny, Niki, and I lived closer together… but I’ve been wishing that for years now. ;) Even though we see each other only a few times each year, you know you can spot your truest friends when you can pick right back up as if you’ve never been apart. (And, of course, I’m thankful for the internet in faciliating keeping us in touch with each other!) I guess because I didn’t grow up in a big family, I don’t have much use for the whole “family gathering” thing… but what I really love is spending time with my family of choice - my friends. I wish Jenny, Niki, and I could spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas together. Maybe one day we’ll all live closer together… you ladies just need to realize, though, that it’s not likely I’ll be leaving Atlanta any time soon! ;) I’ve found a place where I really feel at home, and that’s a nice feeling.

Well, I’m rambling. I was going to write another post in the same vein as the “Telling My Story” post, but decided against it for now. Maybe another time. Well, now I guess I’ll go watch last week’s Desperate Housewives. Tomorrow I have to do a bunch of work-ish stuff, so I am all about lying on the couch for now!

(My blog used to be mostly posts like this. Well, first it was mostly geeky Mac-related posts, then mostly posts like this. That amuses me, for some reason.)

The GDBF and I just got back from our first-ever Dragon*Con experience. We met up with Sara and griftdrift - and some of their very interesting friends - at the Hyatt, and a podcast ensued. It should be available soon is now available for your listening pleasure.

Also, here’s photographic evidence that Rusty and I are officially members of the press. (Click for larger versions… yes, on Flickr.)

We felt woefully under-dressed. Tomorrow morning we’re going to Junkman’s to pick up something a little more remarkable for each of us. Rusty needs to look less like a frat boy, and I need to work those tits more.

Big thanks to Thomas for helping us land the press passes! You rock, d00d!

This is from a spam email I just received:

panic bar dak bungalow carpet bed
thorny-edged corn-fed fat-tailed
high-stepping tooth cough Alpine parnassia
balance piston silver salt window dressing
foot stove still-flowing swift-spoken
Un-semitic self-purifying gold-rush
Wen chang bee milk quasi punishment
broad-spoken servant girl cattle mange

Wow. It’s like a haiku, except… not. Interpretations are welcome and encouraged.

In other news, today is the 26th birthday of the Village Whore Junky Slutbunny, a.k.a. my dear friend Jenny (or in the comments as “jt”). So that the legacy of her personal achievements lives on, I refer you to the old-school photo I posted on her birthday last year.

You should go see the North Fulton Drama Club’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, which opens tonight at Barrington Hall in Roswell. Nikki, Thomas, Alyssa, and their cast and crew have been working their tails off to make this happen. The scene Rusty and I saw them perform at the Alpharetta Arts StreetFest was awesome, so I can’t wait to see the whole show tonight. And it’s free! So what’s your excuse? Get up there! If you can’t go tonight, it’s also playing tomorrow and next weekend (Friday and Saturday).

I know most of my readers don’t live in New York City; nevertheless, I want to point out that Sex Worker Visions, the art show Dacia is curating, opens tomorrow. I wanted to mention this not because we can all hop on the subway and head over to the LGBT Community Center on W. 13th St., but because this project coming to fruition really inspires me. Dacia went out there and did something - and it’s something unique and awesome (and it’s getting press attention). I felt inspired in a similar way by Kate and Julie, the two women who organized the Decatur production of The Vagina Monologues (which happened last month) - just two regular people, wanting to make something happen and actually going through with it. And good god, let’s not forget the North Fulton Drama Club, the brainchild of Nikki, Thomas, and Alyssa. That totally blew me away.

Seeing my friends turn dreams into reality gives me hope for the things I want to do - even the dreams which are not yet fully formed, but just nebulous ideas of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” floating around in my head. For the longest time I always felt kind of intimidated at the idea of taking on projects that would require me to take risks - including, of course, the risk of outright failure. I would get hung up on logistics - which, to be fair, were often legitimate concerns (e.g., sparse supply of time and/or money) - and end up not doing anything.

But all the awesome stuff the people around me are doing has really driven home that whole idea of being driven by passion to produce amazing results. Because if these people, my friends, who are smart and passionate but not rich or famous or endowed with supernatural powers can make this shit happen, so can I.

The GDBF and I have a project in the works, and you’ll hear about it in more detail soon. A large part of why this idea hasn’t lost momentum in its journey to realization is that it’s our idea, our effort; he keeps me excited about it (and increasingly giddy) and, I hope, vice versa.

Since I can’t think of a way to end this post without getting incredibly cheesy, I’ll just tell you to go read Dacia’s Gothamist interview, published today. If you don’t feel inspired as well after reading it, you should probably see a doctor.

I’m getting pretty sick of all the virtual chest-thumping of the various incarnations of “feminists” (using the word loosely here) that seems to be hitting a high in the blogosphere lately. This isn’t a pissing contest, folks. We’re all supposed to be in this together. Stop making the rest of us (the sane majority) look like a bunch of whiny brats by association.

I’ve decided that instead of continually trying to refute what a bunch of annoying blowhards are saying elsewhere on the internets - from the “BDSM is rape and that’s all there is to it” variety to the “women who call themselves pro-choice but think men should have to pay child support are hypocrites” variety - I’m just going to start explaining my viewpoints. It really shouldn’t take long.

To begin: “women’s issues” are human issues, and all people should have the right to make choices about their own lives, regardless of whether those choices gel with the societal norms of the moment. This seems like a no-brainer.

I’ll do more explaining later, unless I get bored with the whole idea and decide you should just figure it out your damn self (or, if you have really pressing concerns, you can email me).

This weekend in Augusta may result in an abundance of blogging, or a dearth. I cannot yet say. It’ll depend on a lot of things, such as whether my dad comes home, whether the hospital allows visitors to bring their laptops, etc.

I would also like to say that I have been astounded at the generosity of friends and readers in helping me collect some pocket change to assuage the medical bills somewhat. Seriously, I can’t say “thank you” enough. (If anyone else would like to donate, click the Paypal button in the right sidebar; you can also follow the link there to read more.)

More later, or maybe sooner.

Today is Pi Day. Get it? 3.14!! Oh, the hilarity!

In 9th grade, we had a Pi Day Contest, wherein students (read: nerds) could write a poem or short story about pi and submit it for a chance at fame and fortune (read: further ridicule).

My poem won first place, as did Niki’s short story. By way of reward, we were allowed to leave 7th period early to eat apple pie and pick up our $10 gift certificates to… I don’t remember where.

I wish I had saved my Pi Day poem. Actually, it’s probably on a floppy disk somewhere, since at the time I’d just gotten my first computer about a month earlier and was using it for everything. But good luck finding the floppy. Anyway, I do remember that my poem was pretty dark. Yes, a poem about pi can be dark! It included the word “apocalypse” several times. I remember my math teacher called and left a message on my parents’ answering machine, informing me that I had misspelled “apocalypse” and would have to correct it and resubmit the poem. Which apparently I did, since it ended up taking the blue ribbon.

I don’t know what Niki’s short story was about (other than pi, of course). But in 10th grade, Jenny wrote a story for a math project (not Pi Day this time) about shooting up with a dirty syringe. It won some kind of award, too.

Why do I have the feeling that nowadays we’d all be called in for parent-teacher conferences, suspended for several days, and put “on notice” with the school shrink*?

* Ed. note: Our high school didn’t actually have a shrink, but it makes for a better mental image. Our high school did have a rent-a-cop, though.

Niki is doing the Relay For Life up in Ithaca, NY, and her team (”!recnac kcuF”) needs your donations! So stop by and drop in a few bucks if you can.

I would also like to point out that her donation page amuses me greatly, because there’s a cute picture of the three musketeers (taken a few weeks ago in DC), and below it is the following text: “Some have died. Some have survived. All of them have fought. Let’s do this for them.” How’s that for an inadvertant caption.

Those who have fought*

* Ed. note: In no way should this be construed as me making fun of cancer. Don’t be a fool.

Thanks to the hospitality of Yelladog and eponymous, our day in the country went well. We blew some holes in oil containers, Sprite bottles, clay pigeons, and a dearly departed hard drive; then we headed back to Patrick’s place (in the Dart) for some chicken mull and cornbread, and of course a little time spent in the backyard throwing stuff for the dogs to fetch.

I actually don’t have a stumpy left arm; it’s just behind my back.

The GDBF with an assault rifle… swoon!

Rusty blogged it, too.

On the way back to Atlanta, we saw a billboard off of 316 that had a Christian ad on one side - two big tablets and the words, “WE STILL BELIEVE” - and a sex store ad on the other side - “Some toys are for adults.” If only there had been a way to get a photo showing both sides at the same time.