Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Drill, Drill, Drill*

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was
a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of
drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a
particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness
or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I
have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact
that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence
against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the
Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The
people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story --
connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance,
and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those
candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in
so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally
disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the
world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen
the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency
with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a
metaphor. In her world and the world of fundamentalists nothing
changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global
warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's
plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered
species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here
to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It
was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women
who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should
have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or
not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we
know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather
she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to
dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an
environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could
and might very well be the next president of the United States . She
would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting
rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot
hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private
right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are
denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this
election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the
future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine
whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever
uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards
dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether
we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in
alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It
will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or
whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine
whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of
fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your
power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the
hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of
teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of
destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the
floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between
nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing
we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Imagine A Woman by Patricia Lynn Reilly

Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honours her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honours the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life.
A woman who embraces her life as teacher, healer, and challenge.
Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace.

Imagine a woman who participates in her own life.
A woman who meets each challenge with creativity.
Who takes action on her own behalf with clarity and strength.

Imagine a woman who has crafted a fully-formed solitude.
A woman who is available to herself.
Who chooses friends and lovers with the capacity to respect her solitude.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the full range of human emotion.
A woman who expresses her feelings clearly and directly.
Who allows them to pass through her as naturally as the breath.

Imagine a woman who tells the truth.
A woman who trusts her experience of the world and expresses it.
Who refuses to defer to the thoughts, perceptions, and responses of others.

Imagine a woman who follows her creative impulses.
A woman who produces original creations.
Who refuses to colour inside someone else’s lines.

Imagine a woman who has relinquished the desire for intellectual safety and approval.
A woman who makes a powerful statement with every action she takes.
Who asserts to herself the right to reorder the world.

Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love of herself.
A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life.
Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Banks, Bras and Brilliance

Yet more fabulousness from xkcd.com

And those deep question of philosophy and Shakespeare...

In credit crunch news, "A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not"." read more...

That reminds me of the man who changed his name to Yorkshire Bank PLC are Fascist Bastards, and when the said bank told him to close his account he asked them to write a cheque for his remaining balance (a whopping 69p), payable to his new name.

Designer Vaginas

I'm watching a documentary called The Perfect Vagina, about the rising trend of women having cosmetic surgery on their vaginas.

It is the fastest growing area of cosmetic surgery, and seems to be predominantly due to women's concerns about the size of their labia minora. In a medical research paper referenced in the programme, we learn that labia minora range in size from 20mm to 100mm, so naturally there is a lot of variation, but it seems that the vaginas we see, especially in porn, are 'perfect' and contained and neat, with small labia minoras, and this is making many women insecure. To the point of wanting surgery to reduce theirs.

Girls of 14, 15 and 16 are enquiring about the surgery, and the numbers seeking it are unprecedented.

The operation is called a labiaplasty and it is done under local anaesthetic, the woman being awake while her labia are sliced off. It can take three months for the vagina to recover after surgery.

The presenter, Lisa Rogers was clearly moved and alarmed by the attitudes she came across, from women, from men and from medical professionals. We also saw her own changes throughout the film.

She continually wanted women to love their bodies, and their vaginas, and could see clearly that cutting bits off and stitching bits up was not any kind of answer to the problem of us feeling so pressurised by our pornified society that even intimate parts of our bodies do not look 'right' and must be brutally modified.

The whole programme made me incredibly sad. It strikes me that hating our vaginas is yet another way that our patriarchal society infiltrates our minds and destroys women. Piece by piece.

Wiki Birthday

Look up your birthday on Wikipedia. Pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday.

May 14th

Events


• 1796 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
  
• 1889 - The children's charity the NSPCC is launched in London.
  
• 1925 - Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway is published.
  
• 2005 - Pope Benedict XVI observes his first beatification, elevating Blessed Marianne of Molokai on the road to canonization into sainthood.
  
  
  Births
  
  
• 1666 - Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (d. 1732)
  
• 1926 - Eric Morecambe, British comedian (d. 1984)
  
• 1982 - BeardyMan, English beatboxer
  
  
  Deaths
  
  
• 1847 - Fanny Mendelssohn, German composer and pianist (b. 1805)
  
• 1998 - Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor (b. 1915)
  
  
  Holidays
  
  
• Feast Day of St. Boniface of Tarsus

Free Tibet

Holy Ghost

Yet more from the ingenius xkcd.com

Photography Blog Updates

In no particular order

Weather Vane Compass

Blue Bandstand

Girls Can Be Geeks, Too

ESPRE

More of my work used elsewhere

Park Benches

Children Playing: Stencil Art

Diagnosis Research

At a hospital appointment last week, I received a diagnosis of sensorimotor axonal neuropathy. Possible causes they are looking at are medication-related, coeliac disease, and vasculitis. We know that I don't have diabetes or alcoholism, which are the most common causes.

So, of course, I'm doing all the googling. Amongst others, I have learned these two things:

1)

With exception of the Roman Catholic Church, most mainline Christian churches offer their communicants gluten-free alternatives to the sacramental bread, usually in the form of a rice-based cracker or gluten-free bread. These include United Methodist, Christian Reformed, Episcopal, Lutheran, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many others.

Roman Catholic doctrine states that for a valid Eucharist the bread must be made from wheat. [...] On August 22, 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith apparently barred coeliacs from ordination, stating, "Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of the priest, candidates for the priesthood who are affected by coeliac disease or suffer from alcoholism or similar conditions may not be admitted to holy orders." After considerable debate, the congregation softened the ruling on 24 July 2003 to "Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of a priest, one must proceed with great caution before admitting to Holy Orders those candidates unable to ingest gluten or alcohol without serious harm."

2)

In patients with an aggressive, evolving polyneuropathy or a specific paraneoplastic syndrome, additional testing for an occult malignancy is often performed

(my bold - am I possessed by some kind of ghost with cancer?!)

More seriously of course, it is good to finally have a diagnosis. Just need to try and get to the bottom of what's causing it, to be able to find out if it can be treated.

I've been Stumbling.

StumbleUpon...



from Brad Barrett's Iraq Paper. It seems the tutor *really* wanted a specific answer!

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Made at flashface.ctapt.de. It kind of looks like me.

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Five minute chocolate cake

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Bubbles game. I used to have this on my phone, highly addictive.

Wordle.net

I've been having a lot of fun with this new toy

From this blog in general.



From this Stonewall post



From this post about lapdancing



From my photography blog

Duty Calls

I ♥ you xkcd.

Last Night

11.30pm - go to bed. Take night meds, include painkillers for toothache.

12.30am - going insane with toothache. Smear orajel over teeth.

1am - do three Buddhist pain management meditations.

1.30am - smear orajel over teeth and gums.

2am - getting insaner. Pain pain pain!

2.30am - cry.

3am - run a bath, get in the bath, hope the heat will soothe and relax. It doesn't.

3.45am - google 'pain management'.

4am - smear orajel over teeth and gums.

4.15am - cry.

4.30am - get the instruction manual out for the brand new microwave, learn how to use it. Heat up wheat bag.

4.45am - slight relief from the heat of the wheat bag! Yey!

5.30am til 6am - SLEEP!

6am - wake up throbbing, agony, argh. Count down til 7am painkillers.

7am - painkillers. While it's a relief to take them, realise that it'll be another 45 minutes til they have any effect, which they didn't last night.

7.30am - cry. Smear orajel over teeth.

8am til 11am - listen to radio, try not to cry, moan, groan or rock.

11.30am til 1pm - SLEEP!

1pm - bastard evil bastard evil electricity meter reader wakes me up by ringing the bell incessantly.

1pm til now - ouch, yuck, grim, tired, pain, ARGH.

Things You Really Need to Look At.

Carved crayons - w-o-o-o-w.

Google in 20 years - genius, I need this for my house.

I love tattoos, but... - some of these aren't so bad but some are so, so, so bad.

Another Funny Tattoo for the html geeks among us.

Sins - what happens with different combinations of the seven deadly sins.

Hillary. Normally avoiding all mention of the endless US elections, had to share this one.

15 hilarious church signs - Not sure I'd go with 'hilarious', but some raised a smile, especially the google reference.

Vandals like tetris too

15 Spectacular Lightning Images - what it says on the tin.

Last Day on Earth - yowch, someone's in trouble...

Talkin' Serious Cute - indeed. Serious cute.

The Man She Forgot to Google

Along the Autobahn. Don't speed. Really don't speed.

Wiki Fact of the Day

Sellotape entry.

BoJo

Oh for fuck's sake.

So, so wrong

in so many different ways...

Impossible Babe of the Day.

Do we go with the political? Having a 'babe of the day' at all?
The technical? That photoshopping is appalling - her back would break and her shadow actually has a stomach.
Back to the political? What on earth are we telling women and girls about how they should look?
Back to the technical? What the hell happened?

Gah!

You Stage Two

You.

Monday Mumbles

The 100 Greatest Female Artists of Rock'n'Roll has been published.

How is Celine Dion there and not Nina Simone? I mean really, how is Nina Simone *not* on there? It's obscene!

Still on music, it's surprising just what can be created using only sounds from Windows XP and Windows 98.

If you're running short of toilet paper, why not try the 100% recycled Shit Be Gone! That is seriously its name. I do like it when you know where you are with a product, and exactly what it will do!

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose teenage years were characterised by Judy Blume and all her books and characters. Interesting to see, then, that two of her books have been updated to reflect more recent practise in sexual health. And one of them's Forever, which was the one we all thought was exceedingly rude. Ah, the innocence!

New Photo Blog Updates

The Orton Effect

Photo to Drawing: Raspberries

Spell With Flickr

More Orton Effect

Fake Model Photography

Same Photo, Different Treatments