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Look, CHANGE!! Change is fucking awesome!!
I am also happy that all around the country, anti-choice measures were repeatedly shot down. California parental notification for abortion--did not pass. Colorado fetal personhood amendment--did not pass. South Dakota abortion ban--did not pass. I am glad that women everywhere can still make the CHOICE about what to do with their bodies and their fetuses.
But now the bitter part:
Proposition 8 in California: Passed. I am heartbroken. Extremely heartbroken. I am also disappointed and disgusted at all those who voted yes. I thought Californians knew better than to give in to the fearmongering of the Yes on 8 faction. Also, WTF Californians--you care more about chickens than gays?!?!?!?!
Amendment 2 in Florida: Passed. Yet another gay marriage ban. Of course, it's FLORIDA, but still. It's a blow to gay rights everywhere.
Proposition 102 in Arizona: Passed. Yay, no gay marriage for Arizona. *pukes*
Act 1 in Arkansas: Passed. Now gay couples are unable to adopt or foster-parent children. There are more children in the foster care system than there are homes for them, and placing them gay homes would have helped with this. Pro-life people who voted to pass this--you are fucking hypocrites.
Also, a former classmate of mine passed away last night. He was in a car crash, and sustained a lot of injuries. My condolences go out to his surviving family.
This has been a bittersweet day for me...all I want to do now is go home and gather my thoughts before tackling the world again.
- Mood:
disappointed
- Location:VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE
- Mood:
amused - Music:VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE
...unless you are a felon, 'coz felons can't vote.
Just some pre-election fun for all of you!
- Mood: amused
- Music:Vote Vote Vote
Vote Cthulhu. Because if you don't, he'll fucking eat you.
LOL. No, but seriously, these are my endorsements for President and for the CA propositions this coming election.
( Endorsement time!!!! )
- Mood:
hopeful
My facebook status this week and until election rolls along is this:
Jolleen will shun anyone who votes for Props 8 and 4. Shunnnnn. Shuuuuuunnnnnn.
Because of this, I found out that a cousin of mine is voting yes on 8. My heart is broken. Broken, I tell you. You have no idea how bad it feels that a family member of yours is voting on a proposition that would deny rights to you and to the people you love, effectively shunning you and others like you under the law.
Notice my choice of words in the above paragraph.
I've been dawdling about this, but I guess now is the time to come out (yeah, I know, too late for national coming-out week). I am bisexual. I've known it for quite a while--since HS, actually--I've told some of you about it, and for those of you I didn't tell, you may have guessed it. Surprise (or not), Jolleen is bi.
I've only ever dated and shown that I was attracted to guys, yes, but that stemmed out of fear--fear that I would be judged, fear that I would be shunned, fear that I would not be loved back by the woman I'd show love to, fear that my sexual orientation would be dismissed as promiscuity and not taken seriously. It's a horrible feeling, this fear that you'd be judged because of the gender of the person you choose to be with. Even now, as I broadcast the fact that I am very much bisexual to the whole world, I fear that my family and friends will change their opinion of me when they see this entry...that they'll love me less, or even hate me. I know how my mom and some of my other family members and friends talk about gay people. I've heard them say "bakla," "tibo," "fag," etc. in that horribly dismissive and deriding tone. I've carefully hidden how much that hurts, but now, I have to speak up. It hurts. It hurts ME.
Look, I'm still currently very much in love with a male member of our species--my boyfriend is a wonderful man, and I'll go on loving him as long as I can, and I plan to marry him someday. But...I just can't help thinking that I was (and still am, a little) attracted to a female who is a lot like my boyfriend--she's a wonderful, beautiful woman who shares the same interests and love of music that I do. If circumstances were such that I got over my fears, accepted her offer to go out, and ended up with her instead, I would most probably have loved her as much as I love my boyfriend. I would've wanted my family to welcome her as much as they've welcomed my boyfriend, I would've wanted her family to welcome me too, I would want all my friends to be happy for us, and I would have wanted to marry her. And I couldn't have married her if it was illegal under the law. Do you understand how heartbroken I would be? Do you understand how much it would hurt? I do, and I'm not even in the situation--I just came *thisclose* to being in it.
So...now that you know this about me, you will understand why I am asking--no, begging--all of you to vote NO on Proposition 8.
- Mood:
optimistic
(WARNING: turn the volume down. I will not be responsible for any ear injuries that result)
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OMFG, I have been playing the flute four months and I have better intonation than she does. UGH, my ears are still smarting.
Ok, so this has nothing to do with how much she sucks as a vice-presidential candidate, but I'm just throwing it on the pile of "Sarah Palin Suck" because it seems to belong there. BTW, did any of you watch the debates? Did you see how Biden mopped the floor with Palin? I feel a little giddy with glee.
- Mood:
embarrassed - Music:Palin's mediocre flute-playing
If you grow up in Hawaii (isn't that our 50th state?) raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different." If you grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers and shooting wildlife for sport from an airplane, you are a quintessential American story.
If your name is Barack, you couldn't be a regular American. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick.
If you graduate magna *** laude from Harvard law School you are unstable, but if you attend 5 different small colleges - including the University of Hawaii! - before graduating, you're well grounded.
If you spend 3 years as a $13,000/year community organizer working with churches to retrain laid-off steel workers and implement after-school youth programs, become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a constitutional law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Relations Committee, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Veterans’ Affairs Committee, you don't have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is being local TV weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 16 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you advocate the teaching of responsible, age appropriate sex education, including how to help little children escape from sex offenders and child molesters, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's. If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
If you devote your life to making our country a better place for all Americans, not just a privileged few, then you are not for change. But if you are under investigation for getting people fired because they can't get along with your family, then you are a candidate with "integrity."
OK, much clearer now.
If your name is Barack, you couldn't be a regular American. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick.
If you graduate magna *** laude from Harvard law School you are unstable, but if you attend 5 different small colleges - including the University of Hawaii! - before graduating, you're well grounded.
If you spend 3 years as a $13,000/year community organizer working with churches to retrain laid-off steel workers and implement after-school youth programs, become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a constitutional law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Relations Committee, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Veterans’ Affairs Committee, you don't have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is being local TV weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 16 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you advocate the teaching of responsible, age appropriate sex education, including how to help little children escape from sex offenders and child molesters, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's. If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
If you devote your life to making our country a better place for all Americans, not just a privileged few, then you are not for change. But if you are under investigation for getting people fired because they can't get along with your family, then you are a candidate with "integrity."
OK, much clearer now.
Seriously though, people are getting sick and tired of hearing that up is down and black is white from the Republican party. PLEASE DO NOT VOTE THESE IDIOTS INTO OFFICE AGAIN.
- Mood:
annoyed
IT WAS EMPTY. My food was not there.
WHY?!?! Why the fuck would you throw away a perfectly good, half-eaten Thai duck dinner?!?!? Specifically, MY perfectly good, half-eaten, Thai duck dinner, with a bowl of Tom Yum seafood soup on the side?!?! IT'S DUCK, people. Duck is freaking expensive. So is the seafood in the Tom Yum soup. Teh bf bought it for me because I'm sick and I need cheering up and healthy food. That's $10 down the drain--teh bf ate the other $10 worth of food, and he was saving my half for when I felt well enough to eat. Now I'm awake at 5:30am with NOTHING good to eat. I have to content myself with canned stuff or instant ramen instead of a wonderful, spicy Tom Yum soup and duck meal.
If you're going to throw food away, ASK, dammit. And if no one is there to say yea or nay as was in this case, because the decongestant I took knocked me out at around 7:30pm last night, give it the benefit of the doubt and throw it in the fridge. The terrible waste of duck that happened today would've been avoided if my family members just followed the above instructions. But nooooooo. They don't. They just throw away good food.
I want my duck, dammit. Somebody better buy me a replacement, or else I will be ornery for the rest of the day.
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So as you have surmised from the above rant, I'm sick. Like, really sick. It's a particularly nasty bug that produces flu-like symptoms. My nose is congested and/or runny, my sinuses hurt like hell, my head hurts, my throat is raw, and it seems like all my muscles hurt. Sounds like the flu, right? Except I shouldn't have the flu because I got a flu-shot before the season, like a good sheep should. Damn it. Damn it to Heck.
I think stress is the reason my sickness is as bad as it is. Commuting 6hrs a day then being in school from 9-5 doesn't help. I do get every other day off because I only go to class on MWF and TThSSu are free, but still. Sigh. Bedrest it is for the rest of the weekend.
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Election time, and Gravel is still in the race, people! For those of you who were supporting Kucinich and now have no one to support, check Gravel out. From blog.wired.com:
"...you will take the oppressive nature of the state and marry it with the oppressive nature of religion, and that is the ultimate oppression of human beings."
WOW. That is the first time I've heard of a political figure say in no uncertain terms that it is NOT right to keep injecting religious thought into everything. See, this is why you who can vote should support him.
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I'm organizing a charity folding bike ride on April 19. If you want to join, check out http://socal.folder.ride.googlepages.co
- Mood:
sick
"Partial-birth abortion" isn't even a medical term. It's a term coined by the "pro-life" faction, designed to be vague enough to encompass a lot of abortion procedures. The Supreme Court must be stupid indeed to put the lives of millions of women and children in danger to appease a couple of pro-life activists. Oh, wait. They aren't really pro-life aren't they? If they were, they would know that the woman carrying the child is a life too, possibly more so than the fetus she is carrying. If they were, they'd make measures to protect BOTH the mother and the child, not measures that will endanger both.
From the article:
<i>"We know that pro-choice policies save lives, and make for healthier women, healthier families, and healthier children. We know what happens when abortion is illegal or highly restricted. We know that anti-choice forces in the United States seek to completely outlaw the procedure, turning women and doctors into criminals. We know that they have little regard for women's lives, and almost no regard for women's physical health. And now our own Supreme Court has given them the green light."</i>
Read the full story here.
Seriously. This is a strong blow to all the pro-choice people out there, and not just to them--to the millions of women that seriously need abortion procedures for medical reasons. I myself would want to have the option to terminate my pregnancy if I knew that my child would only survive a few, painful weeks outside my womb. I would want the right to an abortion if I knew that trying to have my child would endanger both myself and my unborn baby. But the way things are going, it seems that I won't have that right. I guess all I can do now is hope and pray that all my pregnancies will be problem-free, and that the millions of women in the country will have uncomplicated pregnancies too.
So to all women, please fight for your right to have healthy and safe pregnancies for both you and your child. To all the men who love these women, fight for their rights too. Be pro-life, and by pro-life, I mean support the right of women to make a choice that will be the best for all parties involved--even if the choice means having an abortion.
- Mood:
scared
Bush: In respect to that question...
Me: Ha! Bush said "in respect"! Dubaya is dumb!! Bwahahahahahahaha!!
I think he said more after that, but the rest his speech was drowned out by my insane cackling.
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Tell me people, aren't we all sick and tired of Dubaya's English? Don't our ears all start hurting and our temporal lobes start going haywire when we hear El Presidente speak? Well, to remedy that, I have written a letter to him, which I hope he will eventually read. I decline to mail this letter because I am too cheap to pay the postage.
Dear Dubaya,
Oh come on, Mr. President. What's up with your English? How can Americans expect you to run their country properly when you can't even use grammar correctly? The correct phrase is "WITH respect to" not "IN respect to". Write that down and repeat it 4,361,978,654,382 x 10^100 times before you sleep. It would work better than counting sheep or the number of people who are displeased with you.
I strongly suggest you visit this website: Common Errors in English. You can also read the book Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brian ($15, very cheap).
I'm not saying that I am the world's greatest grammar goddess, but great galloping galoshes! I grew up in a foreign country (a "third world" country at that), but I speak better English than you. One would think you never learned proper English. Being Texan is no excuse. What a disgrace.
If you want sir, I can write your speeches for you. For the low, low price of withdrawing American forces from Iraq, I will organize your scatterbrained ideas into a coherent, gramatically correct and aurally pleasing manner. Think about it--you'll save money, and you won't be the laughingstock of grammar gods and goddesses everywhere. Isn't that great?
Sincerely yours,
Nekohime
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But wait...here's a scary thought. What if George W. Bush is a reflection of the current state of America? What if the majority of Americans are dumb, grammatically incorrect warfreaks with funny accents?
I shudder at the thought.
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[edit 03/23/2006, 2:55am]
Nikka was right...the majority of Americans are grammatically stupid. I administered an open-question survey for my psych research class earlier...no wait, yesterday...and 70% of respondents had grammatical errors. For example:
"This research is very strait forward" *it's straightforward, one word, with straight, not strait*
"It was okay and you should change some things like add more emotions aside from nervousness" *run on*
"It is very difficulty to understand some questions" (the person who wrote this was not foreign. He was an American-born White male.)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!
The Cat has died from an aneurism in the Broca's area.
- Mood:
evil - Music:Carlos Gardel - Por favor déjame
