And, he also linked this very cute takeoff of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  The video is crap, but the song is worth a listen.

Merry Xmas.

LOVE it.  Thanks, Alex.

One more.  Apocalyptica.  It’s gorgeous.

I don’t know when I started loathing the holidays.  I learned about Santa when I was six because he didn’t visit our house one Christmas (to fill the stockings.  Nothing worse than waking up to an empty stocking).  I ran to tell my mother (who was still in bed), and she told me to go back to bed.   An hour later, she told me that Santa had come.  Sure enough, my stocking was filled.  Um, yeah.

In seventh grade, I wrote an article for the school paper about the commercialization of Christmas, and my feelings have only stronger on the subject since then.  And, as I touched on in yesterday’s entry, Christmas in recent years means sitting around feeling like a complete loser/outsider whom wouldn’t even be missed if she weren’t there.

Sure, it’s partly because of my anti-tradition stance, but it’s something deeper than that.  I think because the alienation I feel on a daily basis is only exacerbated at this time of year.

Plus, as we near the end of the year, I become reflective of all the things I haven’t done yet.  Yes, that’s the way I roll.  I do it on my birthday, too, which is why I used to hate my birthday.  Now, I am largely indifferent to it.

Anyway.  I do have a point to this entry.  As much of a curmudgeon I am, there is one Christmas classic that I adore.  I sang it one Christmas (yes, in a church), and it sends chills down my spine whenever I hear it.  In fact, I was at a Big Name Bookstore (bought some mysteries full-price as my treat to me after stopping by FedEx Office to make sure the manuscript from hell got sent off.  I usually buy my books on line at Half.com), and I heard the song there. It actually made me…less freaked out for a second.

So, I have been teasing people for weeks about my favorite carol because no way in hell anyone would ever guess what it was.  It totally does not fit my personality at all.  However, I am unapologetic about it.  I love this Christmas song, and it’s one I will actually listen to more than once.  So, for you, on this Xmas Eve day, I am presenting several versions of the song that I enjoy.

Celtic Woman:

Josh Groban:

Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo:

CeCe Winans:

David Archuleta:

And, this is my personal favorite, WEEZER:

And, since I’m still a cranky old, bitch, here is Jessica Simpson mangling the song.  You’re welcome.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.  Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish readers.  Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Solstice, and Happy Festivus to all.   May 2010 be better than 2009 for everyone except Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, and Dick Cheney.

The next day, I wake up to questions on Facebook about my blog.  I got an email from a friend who isn’t on FB asking where in the hell my blog was.  I checked my site, and it could not be found.  What the hell?  It’s never been down before.  Ever.  This was suspicious behavior, so I called my tech support (again, my truly awesome brother) ASAP.

“Brother!  My site is down!”  I cried in anguish.

“Call your tech support!”  He said back.

“You are my tech support!”  I retorted.

“Oh yeah!”  He replied.  He went onto my site, and he was quiet for a moment.  Then, he said, “This is…interesting.”

Now, when one cannot access one’s site, one DOES NOT want to hear the word ‘interesting’ in that context.  Patience has never been my strong point, so I question just what exactly is so interesting.

“Your site is gone,” my brother said, his tone bemused.

“What the fuck?????  It’s what?”  Ok, no I didn’t say it like that because I don’t swear (much) in front of my brother, but it certainly was what I was saying in my mind.  Instead, I said something like, “What do you mean by gone?” in an admirably restrained voice.

“It’s gone.  There’s nothing here.  The files, gone.  Interesting.”

Another interesting?  My heart couldn’t take it.  I demanded to know what was interesting.  I didn’t really want to know, but I did.

“You’ve been hacked.”

“What????  Hacked????  Was it personal?????”

“These things usually are.”

All this time, my brother was doing his techie whiz thing, including sending an email to his provider.  He (my brother) hosts my account, so it really is all in his hands.

After an interminable amount of time (probably a minute or two), he declared that all my files were gone.  We had a backup database (thank you, bro, for suggesting that), but still.  It was unsettling to know that someone hated me so much, he would hack into my account and wipe out everything.  I hung up after admonishing my brother to keep me updated.

A bit later, he called me back and told me that his provider had been hacked and that many of their servers had been wiped out.  Our server, alex, was on the list because the virus was alphabetical in nature and made its way to D.  So, we would have to wait for the provider to restore everything.

What?  The provider was hacked?  That didn’t make me feel very secure (although, as my bro pointed out, this was the only time it’d happened), but it did make me feel better.  No one was after me, personally.  Nice to know.

By the way, my brother clued me in on KeePass (which I keep thinking of as KeepAss), which is a system that generates really sound passwords.  I installed it, and I’m keeping it, even though I wasn’t personally hacked.

Now, to the other part of my technological difficulties.  For the last month or so, I have been receiving ominous warnings from Facebook informing me that I am doing something that might be construed as annoying to other users.  I was ‘misusing’ certain features.  They didn’t specify what features.  They only gave general guidelines, such as posting too many videos and spamming.  I didn’t do either of those, so I ignored the first warning.

Then, I got another one.  Concerned, I tried to email Facebook (which is difficult to do in and of itself, since it’s harder than hell to find a viable email address for them) to see exactly what I was doing wrong, but I received no reply.  Because I am a research goddess, I then Googled everything I could about this kind of warning.  It turned out that many users have received an identical warning over the years, and Facebook hadn’t ever addressed the issue.  You can be banned for adding too many friends at one time.  You can be banned for ignoring too many requests at one time.  You can be banned for exceeding the friendship limit (currently 5,000, but they are changing that).  You can be banned for exceeding the group membership limit.  I wasted a lot of time obsessing about what I had done because FB wasn’t telling me.

I was getting frantic and paranoid.  Another reason they might ban or block you is if you post ‘objectionable’ content.  They don’t say exactly what that is (I guess it’s like pornography.  They know it when they see it), and they allow people to anonymously report posts they don’t like.  I have no problems with that, but I do have problems with not being told if that was my particular problem.  You see, I am a tad bit raunchy and a tad bit salty in my posts (yes, just a tad), and I have several friends on my list from high school who are very different than I am now.  It was conceivable that one or more of them reported one of my posts, shocked at my outrageousness.

I grew more frantic.  I also read that FB will block you if you type too fast, but I never took that seriously.  I started to get these warnings quite regularly.  I freaked out more.  I have friends around the world, and we all congregate on FB.  I posted several notices that if I was suddenly gone, the FB police had disappeared me.  I wanted my friends to be prepared.

This week, I didn’t get any warnings, and I foolishly thought my troubles were over.  Why foolishly, you ask?  Because on Thursday night, right in the middle of posting, my account was disabled.  One minute, I was posting to Rubo’s wall, and the next, my account was gone.  I got an email from Rubo asking WTF, and I had to say my account was disabled.  I emailed that message to several of my FB friends, and they started to brainstorm how to get me back on.  I would like to give a shout-out to Rubo, Alex, Topaz, and TiredMom for working so passionately in trying to get me back on FB.  You guys really made me feel so much better about the whole situation.  I would also like to thank Choolie and Gregory for being so supportive in my time of need, too.  Y’all rock!  Oh, and much love to my bro who tried to help me figure out what to do about having my account disabled.

I sent an email to Facebook inquiring as to why I’d been disabled and how I could get my account reinstalled.  In the meantime, I was thinking of ways to get this known in the traditional media because it seemed a crying shame that they could disable an account so cavalierly.  I felt very unhappy, isolated, and depressed without my account and without my blog.  One reason I didn’t want to open up a Facebook account was because I knew that I would probably grow dependent on it.

I could have started a new account, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that.  If I did, I would have severely culled my friends list as I was convinced one of them ratted me out.  I didn’t want to have to watch what I was posting, weighing every word.  That didn’t seem like much fun to me.  Saddened, I went to bed at five in the morning.  I couldn’t really sleep, though, so I got up at ten.

When I got online a bit later, I had an email from Facebook sitting in my Inbox.  I was afraid to open it because often times, FB would send out a boilerplate email saying you have been terminated, this is our final decision.  Very few people got their accounts reopened, and most of them took days, weeks, months in order to do so.  Imagine my surprise when I read that they had reviewed my case and reopened my account.  I was pleased, but one line irritated me.  It said that I had been warned several times about posting too quickly, but that I had ignored the warnings.

Well, no, I hadn’t been told that.  I had been told that spamming would have triggered the warning.  I didn’t spam, so I never thought that they meant me when they said spamming was a reason to be blocked.  If they had said, “You are posting too quickly to your friends’ walls,” then I would have known what they actually meant.  I sent them an email saying so.  I got a response saying that Facebook has a limit as to how fast someone can post, but they cannot tell me what that limit is.

I posted a snarky post on my FB page (‘coz I am all about the snark) about how it would behoove them to have a better spam filter.  gex rightly pointed out that it’s damn hard to write an algorithm that finely calibrated for a site that large.  She also was right when she added that the problem was their customer service.  My brother had also told me both these things, but I really needed to hear it from someone else.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s true.  I still think it’s a tad silly that my posting speed is what got me banned, even though I can appreciate not wanting people to spam.  I type fast, but not that fast.  I used to open several windows at once so I could reply to several different posts at the same time, but I don’t do that any more.

I digress.  The biggest sticking point in this whole thing is not once did FB tell me what I’d done wrong in specific terms.  I spent the last month guessing and panicking, but I had no way of knowing for sure.  They want to be the best social networking site on the web, but that isn’t possible if they don’t fucking explain situations like this to the customers.

I’d like to say that while I was pissed about the whole situation, FB had a perfect legal right to do what they did.  I have to say that because many people who’ve been banned the way I was have been making noises about illegality.  If no money changed hands (and in some cases, it did, so there is more of a case for illegality there), then they can do pretty much whatever they want to do.

Back to their customer service.  I realize that they are a huge website that operates around the world.  However, if they truly want to be the best, they have to work on their people skills.  It’s really not good PR to just yank people’s accounts willy-nilly and with blanket warnings.  Oh, and when people inquired as to the content that was objectionable, Facebook would say it couldn’t tell them for security reasons.  That was my biggest gripe of all.  How the hell could I fix my behavior if I had no clue what I was doing wrong?  It still leaves a sour taste  in my mouth.  I will continue to use FB, but I’m a lot more cautious now.  I force myself to wait between posts, and it’s lost some of the fun.  Oh well.  At least I’m back on.  For now.

Oops!  I got so wrapped up in my FB woes that I forgot to finish my blog being hacked story.  So, the provider supposedly restored everything yesterday, but I still couldn’t get onto my blog.  I gave up and went to bed.  This morning, I didn’t even bother checking my blog because I didn’t want to be frustrated again.  However, when I checked FB, my brother had posted updated statuses on my wall.  The provider didn’t restore my site (for whatever reason), so he did.  He finished it except for the pics (he forgot) which he added later.

So, the fact that you can read this post is all due to my wonderful, sweet, amazingly brilliant tech support, my brother.  Please show him some love in the comments.  Thanks, bro.  I owe you one hell of a dinner.

First, I gotta vent.  I had to run a quick errand.  I was listening to NPR, and they had on the BBC, who were reporting on MJ’s memorial at the LA Staples Center.   There’s some kind of bidding going on for tickets, and the bidding starts at $5,000.  WTF?  Seriously?  And, there will be souvenir sellers outside as well.

There is something fucking perverted about paying five large to see anyone’s corpse, let alone someone you don’t know.  I don’t give a flying flip how famous he was/is or what he meant to pop or to people personally.  Let’s get away from the fact that that kind of money means that ordinary fans have no chance of buying them (though, something about a lottery or something, I try not to know, may help them out); let’s not dwell on the morbidity of profiting off a dead man; let’s try to ignore what a sad spectacle of a man MJ had grown to be in the adult stages of his life.  Let’s put all that aside and focus on the sheer idiocy of paying five thousand dollars to see a dead celebrity’s body.

Is that what we’ve come to?  Really?

Do y’all remember right after 9/11?  The pundits all sat around with solemn faces saying that life as we know it has changed.  We, Americans, had been irrevocably altered, forever and ever until the end of time.  Even then, I had my doubts about how permanent a change our culture would sustain over the long run, but even I was stunned at how quickly our society fell back into our usual ways.  National jingoism, prolifigate spending, rapacious interest in celebrities and ‘reality’ television, etc.

By the way, I had no idea who the fuck Kate and Jon were until the ‘fallout’ of his ‘cheating’ on her, or what the fuckever.  I feel slimy that I know even that much about them.  The idea that they had a camera in their house for all their children’s lives is despicable.  Oh, and don’t get me started on Octopussy getting her own ‘reality’ television show.

Anyway.  That wasn’t really a digression because both those story support my belief that we, as a society, haven’t fucking changed at all.  Steve McNair, a favorite football player of mine, was found murdered, alongside a twenty-year old woman who was apparently his secret girlfriend.  It appears to be a murder-suicide (with him being murdered), but there is speculation that an ex of the woman may have shot both.  At any rate, while I am saddened by his death, I’m a little bugged out at the fact that he had a girlfriend that young while he was married and the father of four.  Over at BJ, a commenter made the same remark much more forcefully, and he got ripped apart.  Someone as wealthy and famous as McNair is practically  supposed to have a really young girlfriend, and it’s prudish morality to say otherwise.  Now, I realize that the Democratic Party is full of hedonists and whatever, but when did it become wrong to say, “Look, the guy is married with four kids, and he cheated on his wife with a much younger woman.  That’s just not right.”?  I’m not saying he or she deserved to die because no, they fucking did not, but at the same time, I am not comfortable just shrugging my shoulders and saying, “Boys will be boys.”  I’m not disputing it happens; I just refuse to say it’s ok.  If that makes me a moralist prude, then so be it.

Despite my licentiousness, I do have a strong streak of morality that says, “Hey, you fucking made a commitment.  Honor it.”   It’s one reason I have no desire to get married–I don’t think I could or would want to make that commitment to one person.  Otherwise, why the fuck is marriage such a goddamn sacred word that cannot be sullied by teh gayz?  Either it means something, or it doesn’t.

Since I’m dumping, let me add, this is one of the reasons I think Sarah Palin is not completely out of the running for 2012.  Never underestimate the stupidity of the masses or how short-lived our attention is (not to mention the media’s attention.  Like a gnat, that).  Steve Benen wrote an excellent blog entry about it (read Palin’s Perilous Prospects?).  He says much about how I feel about Palin. If she doesn’t go to jail (and it doesn’t seem like she will), all she has to do is be visible, wink and smile a lot, and Rich Lowry and his ilk will be seeing starbursts again.  Do I think she’d win the presidency?  Not really.  Am I as certain as I’d like to be?  No.  You know why?  Because for all the idiocy McCain was spouting and no matter how poorly he handled his campaign, he actually had a chance of winning.

Granted, the issue is complex.  I don’t think Obama would have been elected if W. hadn’t fuck things up so royally.  However, McCain got nearly 60M people to vote for him.  Seriously!  Obama got nearly 67M people to vote for him.  Yes, it’s a lot, but it’s not that much, not when you consider what a joke McCain was.

Oh, speaking of McCain.  Can I tell my lefty kin to politely STFU when they wonder if things would have been any worse under McCain?  Really, no, seriously, STFU.  I can understand being dissatisfied with certain aspects of Obama’s performance, but to say that he’s no better than John McCain is just stupid.  Besides the fact that McCain is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, bleating that we should stand with the Iranian protesters, whatever that means, that we are being tooo nice to our enemies, that we should just bomb the fuck out of ‘em, consequences be damned, he fucking chose Sarah Palin as his VP running mate.  If that doesn’t instantly disqualify him, then I don’t know what does.  So, please, my fellow DFH, let’s not be such drama queens about it, ok?  We don’t have to drink the Obama Koolaid, but we also don’t have to be PUMAs, either.  Sheesh.

Ahem.  So I look around me, and I don’t see much change in our society.  I have to admit that I drank the Koolaid a wee bit during Obama’s campaign, and now, reality has set in.  We still have a government that is in the pockets of various lobbies.  It still takes gobs of money (yes, that’s a technical term.  Look it up) to run for office.  Yes, things still tilt heavily towards the status quo.  I believe that President Obama really does want to enact change with an abundance of hope, but he’s just one man.  In addition, he’s a politician.  It would be stupid of me to expect sweeping changes, either from government or from the people around me.  Again, It’s all about the baby steps.

However, I do not believe in the tale of the Garden of Eden, so instead, I will vaguely curse whatever repressed traditions and customs that force us to wear clothing.  Hm.  That’s not nearly as satisfying as cussing out Adam and Eve, but it’ll have to do.

Let’s put aside the politics of the female body and how it is used to sell products.  Let’s put aside how the new feminism means exploiting your own body and saying it’s grrl power, even though yes means nothing if you can’t say no.  Let’s put aside how it would be so much easier to gauge which guys are engaging in dick fights if we were all naked (and, it would hopefully put to rest lots of the ridiculous macho posturing that guys like to do when they are insecure about their penii).

Instead, I want to focus (I just wrote fuck there.  I have no idea why.  I mean, yes, I want to fuck, but that has nothing to do with being naked.  Or rather, it has nothing to do with my current nakedness.  But I digress) on the fact that naked just feels better.  I sit here blogging in the nude.  It is a humid, sticky day, and I keep the air conditioner set rather high, for conservation sake.  I am thinking of lowering it, but until I do, I sit in a pool of my own sweaty stickiness, uncomfortably aware of just how miserable I am.

In the summer, I walk around the house in a pair of boxers and a tank top.  I pull my hair up into a high ponytail or into a sloppy bun.  I turn on the fan when I get really overheated.  In addition, I get heat rashes because I have really sensitive skin.  A person who lives in Texas e-mailed me today (hey, Keith) and said that it was 97° there, but not too hot.

What. The. Fuck??????  I am wilting if it gets over 70°, and he’s manning up in nearly 100°?  God, that takes a lot of balls–which, obviously, I don’t have.  Literally or figuratively.

Ahem.  Anyway.  Back to nakedness.  I chafe when I am wearing clothing.  As a big-breasted gal, I have to wear a bra outside the house, but I am always aware that I am wearing one.  It doesn’t matter how comfortable it is–it’s still Very Much There.  I mostly wear outer clothes from Taiwan.  I have my mom bring them to me when she comes for a visit.  They are perfect for summer because Taiwanese people know how to make hot weather clothing, but they still irritate me.  Hell, when it’s hot out, my skin fucking irritates me.  Oh, and I am allergic to mosquito bites, so they swell up to the size of…well, big.

Anyway, back to clothing, lack thereof.  Normally, at home, when I get hot, I take off the tank and try to deal.  Right now, though, I’ve had enough.  I’m nekkid as the day I was born (except for the tats, the glasses, the rings, and the earring) and it feels good.  There is something about being in my own skin and nothing else that is freeing.  I can’t hide anything, obviously, nor do I feel the need to hide anything.

In Europe, it’s common to have nude beaches and stuff.  They, apparently, don’t have such a Victorian mentality to the body.  I wish our country would follow suit.  If we were allowed to be naked in public, it would strip some of the mystique of the human body.  I mean, the body is used to sell everything from cars to deodorant (ok, I lied about not mentioning it), and yet, some people freak out if women breast feed in public or if one of Janet Jackson’s pasty-covered nipples pops out on the teevee machine.  Yes, I am still bitter that I chose that moment to go get a snack.

In this country, we view the naked body as sinful.  It’s something that needs to be hidden, or else exploited.  Either we should be ogling the female form in sanctioned venues like beauty pageants and at Hooters, or we should be spared the indecency of a baby nursing.  Why?  I have no clue.  Maybe because it’s a reminder of what the boob’s function actually is.

But I digress, yet again.  The point for me is that there is nothing inherently sinful or shameful about the human body.  I know many people and religions would disagree with me, but fuck ‘em.  I like to walk around the house naked, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that while it’s still light out, for obvious reason.  I think if we as a society could just chill the fuck out over nudity, it would do us a world of good.  Yes, I know it’s just a fantasy, but a grrl can dream, can’t she?

So, for all you bloggers out there, I declare tomorrow nekkid blogging day.  Join me!  Shed your clothes and blog.

In addition, I would like to live in a house of gingerbread in which all the furniture is made of some kind of candy/chocolate.  Instead of making the bed, I would take a bite of the graham cracker sheets, along with the marshmallow pillow, and the chocolate comforter.  Then, I would brush my teeth with chocolate syrup and floss my teeth with cotton candy.

Next, I would eat a real breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, and lox.  In my fantasy world, I am not allergic to any kind of food.  I would drink my cup of Mud Pie coffee (Deans Beans, yo!), and have a piece of chocolate.

Hey, it’s my fantasy world, so I get to eat whatever I want.

Why the hell am I writing about my food-porn fantasies?  Because I have noticed a resurgence in the “eating is not for pleasure–it’s a necessity” school of thought, and I am rebelling against it.  I know food is a necessity.  I know that we can’t shun it the way we can cigarettes (another vice that has been thoroughly villainized, but that’s for another entry), but why should we even want to be able to shun food?

Let me backtrack.  On Saturday, I heard on NPR’s food program from a guy who said that we need to surround ourselves with people who bring…the host cut in and said, “Goodness?”  She quickly retracted herself and said, “Positivity into our lives.”    See, the guy (I think he’s a doctor, but I’m too lazy to look it up) said that if you surround yourself with obese people, you have a blankety-blank chance of being more obese yourself.

Putting aside the idea that being overweight is harmful to your health (I’m not convinced it’s the be-all end-all that many doctors claim it is), this guy was advocating shunting fat people from your life.  People who smoke, too.  Not people who drink, though, oddly enough.  So, he did say that goodness was the right word for it.  We should only hang around people who bring goodness into our lives.

Got that?  If you are overweight or you smoke, you are bringing badness into the lives of the people around you.  I could take that one step further and say if you are the CEO of a major bank and making three hundred times the amount that the janitor is making, you bring badness into the lives of the people around you.  Why is that ridiculous?  It’s no more ridiculous than what this guy is saying.

I am not suggesting that our friends and family do not influence our behavior or our habits.  However, I am protesting the labeling of these behaviors so concretely as bad or good.  Ok, I am bringing the cigarette thing into the discussion because the guy I listened to today on MPR (I will link this guy as he’s a big muckety-muck) was saying we’ve succeeded in making cigarettes the enemy and that people no longer think it’s cool to smoke.

He wants to change the public perception of fast food so it mirrors the new public perception of smoking.  I have issues with this because not only have we broadcast the fact that smoking is bad for you, we have promoted the idea that if you smoke, you are a bad person to boot.  The tolerance for smokers is so low, that if a person smokes, he or she usually feels the need to apologize or defend the habit.  In addition, the hefty taxes on cigarettes and the banning of smoking in all public venues (in MN) place an undue amount of the burden on the poor.  I’ve written about that before, so I’m not going to rehash the points.  What I do want to say is that our black and white way of looking at things doesn’t help.  I smoked a cigarette a day for a while, and my doctor said it didn’t do any real damage to me.  Right now, I smoke four cigarettes each time I go out with my best friend, which is once a month or once every other month.  I have one drink at the same time.  Yet, while the drink would be viewed as natural and perfectly fine (indeed, I’ve been teased for being such a lightweight), the same could not be said of the smoking.

Ok.  Back to Dr. David Kessler on MPR.  First of all, he is annoying.  His voice is whiny, and he is joyless.  This matters because when he talks about eating and food, he sucks the joy out of it.  He kept repeating his mantra of ‘salt, sugar, and fat’ until I wanted to punch him in the mouth.  His book is about the science of overeating and how we have triggers and cues that make us want to eat.  I have no argument there.  In addition, he was saying that fast food restaurants have perfected the best way to trigger us to want to eat more, to never be satisfied.  I can agree with him there as well.

Where I differ is he seems to view eating for emotional reasons or for pleasure as a weakness.  He thinks we should only eat as much as we need (whatever that even means) at any given moment.  He would like to go back to the three meals a day scenario as well.  He thinks you should never be quite full and that it’s good for kids to feel hungry.  One caller said that his doctor gave him the advice to always have hunger pains between meals.

Now, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television, but as someone who has battled eating disorders most of her fucking life, I would like to say something here.  Much of what this doctor advocates (including having your kids read all food labels, constantly questioning what your body needs at any given moment and not what it wants) is something that I did when I was trying to starve myself to death.  I am not saying that people shouldn’t be nutritionally aware of what they eat–I am saying that one should not become obsessed with it as if it’s the only thing important when it comes to food.

The good doctor also said that if kids are informed about their food and involved in the process, they won’t want the fast food any more with its sugar, salt, and fat.  Does he have kids?  I have a niece.  She knows much more about the process of food than I did at her age, and yet, she still likes her McDonalds every now and again.  My mom restricted what food was in the house as I was growing up (put me on my first diet when I was seven), and it didn’t make me any less apt to want to eat rich foods.  If anything, it made me more apt to reach for the sweet stuff.

To be fair, Dr. Kessler acknowledges that your children can’t feel like they’re deprived otherwise, they will gravitate towards the forbidden.  However, in all his talking about food, I never heard any…desire for food itself.   It was depressing to hear him talk about food as though it were the enemy, and I’m afraid that women know all-too-well that way of thinking.

One other thing Dr. Kessler said with which I agree:  It’s difficult to know when you’re hungry because we have so many external cues that war with our body’s instincts.  As I have said before, if I truly try to eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m full approach, I get frustrated because my instincts are all fucked up.  Still, I don’t think taking all the joy out of eating is the answer.   Portion control is something I can get behind.  Put a certain amount on your plate and only eat that.  I don’t countenance any kind of calorie counting (or fat gram counting, for that matter) because in that road lies misery and obsession.

What Dr. Kessler doesn’t seem to grasp is that for many people, there is an emotional aspect to eating.  What’s more, not everyone sees that as a bad thing.  You get together with a bunch of friends and one of them cooks a lovely French meal?  What could be better than giggling, gabbing, and eating fine food?  There is a communal aspect to eating that should be savored, not shunned.

What I am trying to say is, I don’t want to have an adversarial relationship with my food.  I’ve been there done that, and all it does is create more problems than it solves.  To me, when I can shunt aside my own eating issues, food is wondrous, beautiful, glorious, and nourishing.  It would be a shame to reduce it to nothing more than fuel.

First, I would like to thank all the little people–what?  What award am I accepting?  Why, the Moonbat award, silly.  I just got called that by a trollie who took exception to my last post.  He (and I am quite sure it’s a he) went into a rambling mess about the soldier who was killed by the converted Muslim extremist.  If you read the thread I linked, people were wondering how long it would be before the right used this against the left.

What the fuck?  asked I.  When the fuck did we become the party responsible for the Muslim fanatics?  Supposedly, because we (the global lefty we) are against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our words provoked this guy to kill the soldier.  Really.  In fact, one site, the Corner (you know the drill, I’m linking to a linker because I don’t want to infect my computer) asked if wasn’t the peace movement responsible for this attack.  Really.  Because, you know, advocating peace is an incitement to kill.  As one person at BJ said, no, Muslim extremism stems from the same root as Christian extremism.  Plus, as Akatabi, a commenter at TBoggs said:

“ Damn that Olberman and his 28 segments on military recruiters saying they have “blood on their hands”. Damn those Quakers, foaming at the mouth, picketing recruiting centers and harassing poor enlistees, posting their home addresses and requiring a buffer zone around the entrances so the poor defenseless military can enter. Damn Bill Ayers, all over the teevee saying “they had it coming to them”. Damn the President sending taped messages to the annual mass rallies of the War Resister’s League and Rosa Luxemburg Brigade. This is different. Extremism in defense of Liberty is a vice. ”

Yup, it’s exactly the same. No, it isn’t. Fuck that shit. I reject the false equivalency argument because it’s argued in bad faith.  I have not heard one of the so-called liberal types say that our troops were murderers or baby-killers and so was anyone who didn’t do anything to stop them.  Words DO mean something, and our words differ greatly from theirs.  

Anyway, back to Mr. Trollie.  He was incensed because I didn’t write about the above and made some other nasty statements with absolutely zero facts to back them up, so I didn’t print it.  However, I will gladly accept the moonbat epithet he hurled at my head since I like the moon and I like bats, and I would rather be a moonbat than a wingnut any day.  So, I am now taking my rightful place in the leftwing of the Democratic party, and I wear my crown with pride.

As for you, Mr. Trollie, you want to know why I hadn’t written about this incident besides the fact that it had just happened?  Because I didn’t.   That was a simple answer, right?  See, when it’s MY blog (it has my name on the top, so it’s mine), then I get to decide what to write.  When it has YOUR name on the top, then you get to decide what to write.  It’s really not that difficult.  To me, this is the funniest part about blogs in general.  I love the commenters who loudly demand that the blogger write about this or that or not write about this or that or he (usually a he) is going away and never, ever coming back.  Yeah, whatever.  Don’t let the door hit your pale ass as you leave.  

My brother was truly puzzled when I told him about the various trolls I’ve gotten.  He said, “Why would someone do that?  Why can’t they be nice?”  I said, “Because they are men with little dicks and even smaller hearts.”  No, I didn’t (this was my brother, remember), but I was thinking it.  It’s really about inferiority and superiority struggling to co-exist.  See, Mr. Trollie is clearly so much better than I am, and he has to let me know that he is so clearly better than I am.   

All kidding aside, I firmly believe there is a subsect of men who simply cannot handle a woman saying what she thinks without her couching it in niceties and apologies.  What?  A woman dares to have an opinion that is contradictory to mine?  She dares to express it?  It’s similar to the more rightwingnutty belief about abortion–a woman does not have the right to decide what to do with her body.   These men are not interest in a honest debate or about truly changing the other person’s mind–no, they just want to bully and intimidate the opposition into submission.  

I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit.  On BJ, one anti-choice guy was saying that people who act with such smug superiority (about choice being about a woman’s right to autonomy) aren’t going to win over any doubters.  You know what?  I don’t really care.  See, like the last election, we won this particular debate.  Abortion is legal.  Don’t like it?  Move to a country where it’s illegal.  See how much better the quality of life is in one of those countries.  

So.  Now that I am an official moonbat, let me put on my tinfoil hat and welcome you again to my blog.  I might have to rename it “Moonbat Ebil Hebbin’!” (Same initials).

It’s torture.  

There can be no debate. 

The right says, “But it works!”  Then, the left gets derailed into whether it actually worked or not.  No, no, no, we say.  It’s specifically designed to elicit false confessions.  I mean, who wouldn’t make up shit to get the pain to stop?  We go on the defense, trying to refute the meme that torture works (only on the show 24, apparently), until we lose sight of the original argument.

It’s torture.

We are America.  We do not torture.  

The right says, “But waterboarding was only used on three people!  The three most heineous criminals evah!”  Then, the left says, “Yeah, and we had to waterboard one of them a hundred and something times.  That really works, doesn’t it?”  

It’s torture.  

We are America.  We do not torture.  Or at least, we say we don’t torture.

The right says, “Come on, what’s a little sleep deprivation and loud music?  I mean, are you saying we can’t do anything to make the prisoners uncomfortable?”  The left tries to explain why sleep deprivation in and of itself is a big thing (and believe me, as a lifelong sufferer of bad sleep, I know that not getting sleep is detrimental to the psyche, not to mention the motor skills) or how when paired with stress positions, sensory deprivation, and forced nakedness, it can really do mental, and sometimes physical harm.

It’s torture.

We are America.  We do not torture.  Or at least, we say we don’t torture.  And yet, we have American cops using Tasers on suspects, and this is considered harmless.  But people have died from being tasered.  

The right says, “Put a guy into a box and drop an insect on him?  That’s torture?”  The left points out the book, 1984, and try to explain how this guy had a phobia of insects.  I mean, my dad has a snake phobia that is so bad, he can’t even look at a picture of a snake.  Yeah, locking him up in a box with garter snake would constitute psychological torture.  See, there I go, trying to explain what apparently is not explainable to the right.  

It’s torture.

We are America.  We do not torture.  Or, at least, we say we don’t torture.  Then again, we also say we cherish our children, but it seems as if spare the rod and spoil the child is coming back into fashion.  In one particularly interesting hour of NPR programming, they talked about the use of physical restraints on children with emotional disturbances.  In addition, Digby has a disturbing, yet, must-read piece on the increasing acceptance of using physical punishment on children as a way to mold them to more amenable behavior.

You know what?  Fuck the right.  Seriously.  I am sick to death about debating whether or not torture is acceptable.  Really.  It has come to that in America. It’s gotten so bad that some of the far rightwingnutters, via Balloon Juice this time, say that Jesus would have waterboarded because, you know, he died for our sins.  WTF?  Jesus was the ultimate Dirty Fucking Hippie.  He hung out with the untouchables, probably had a thing going with Mary Magdalene, told whomever to turn the other cheek, and chose to die himself for us.  He did not say to the other two men hanging on crosses to the side of him, “Listen up, bitches, we’re getting off this thing and beating the shit out of Pontius Pilate.”  Although, if Jesus is anything like the Jesus portrayed in post #55 of that thread (h/t, EKIM), he might have done just that.  

We are America.  We DO fucking torture.  We shouldn’t, but we do, and apparently, we are ok with that.

It shows how emasculated the right has become that they have to spout this macho bullshit to make them feel better about themselves.  They’re tough, like the President of Texas, Chuck Norris, and they are ready to kick some ass whine and pout about how those big, bad terrorists need to be waterboarded, but we can’t keep them in the USA because they are omigod!  super-evil like Magneto!  No prison can hold him!  Wait, this isn’t an episode of X-Men, otherwise, Wolverine would be around to kick some ass and rip up some guts with his adamantine claws.  Why yes, I’m a Wolverine fangrrl, why do you ask?

Sean Hannity agreed to be waterboarded for charity (well, he was backed into a corner by Charles Grodin, but still), and Keith Olbermann quickly said he would give a thousand dollar  to the families of the troops per second of waterboarding that Hannity could withstand.  To this day, not a peep out of Hannity about undergoing it.  Or Rush, either.  Not that he offered, but he also says he doesn’t think it’s torture.

As I have reported before, Christopher Hitchens actually underwent waterboarding and called it torture.  He did it twice.  Here is the video of the first time he went under.  He was an unabashed supporter of the war beforehand and thought he could withstand a the waterboarding.  He lasted under ten seconds, I believe, and he still suffers from the aftermath.  Anyway, now, a radio shock jock named Eric Mancow (yes, that’s a fake last name) decided to undergo the ordeal as well in order to prove it wasn’t torture.  His situation was much more relaxed as he joked about it with his ‘torturer’.  He lasted under ten seconds as well.  There was a Playboy guy who did it as well, but you’ll have to look him up because he annoyed me.

They all said it was torture.  It was fucking torture.  However, I agree with those who think the focus on the waterboarding itself is a shame because we did so much more than that.  On the otherhand, the waterboarding is the handy symbol of torture.  

So.  I issue a challenge to Hannity and Limbaugh and especially that asshole, Glenn Beck.  I will allow myself to be waterboarded, knowing full well that it’s torture, if all three of you  allow yourselves to be waterboarded as well, claiming that it isn’t.  How about it, boys?  Gonna let a mere girl show you up?

P.S.  There are many on the left who want to get away from this issue because they think the very fact that we know what happened is enough.  Wrong.  People like Cheney learned from people like Nixon, and unless we take a stand against them, there will be a Cheney clone (perhaps his daughter) who will be emboldened by what Cheney and his ilk did and go several steps further.  This is not about the past.  This is about the future.

So, how am I planning on tying up the loose ends from my previous six entries and summing them up in one neat, coherent, thought?  I’m not.  I’m just going to ramble on some more, as is my wont, and then come to a screeching halt.  I will say one thing in advance of the verbal torrent, though, I want to discuss the impact of religion on my personal life and the impact of religion on my political life.  For the purposes of this blog entry, I am going to assume the two do not overlap.

First up, religion in my personal life.  My friend, Natasha, says she doesn’t take offense at the religious people in her life because they are trying to save her from eternal damnation.  In their minds, her soul is at peril, and they are trying to save it.  I actually agree with this.  I don’t particularly care if people (like my mom) want to pray for my soul.  In fact, it’s sweet when my niece tells me, her eyes wide with concern, “You’ll go to hell” (because I don’t believe Jesus is my savior).  

However, that brings up a sticking point–when do I get to mention my beliefs to my nieces and nephews?  I tried a couple of times when my niece was younger, but I was told by many people that it’s not fair or right of me to tell my niece my beliefs.  It’s like I wouldn’t tell her there is no Santa Claus, right?  Well, no, I wouldn’t, but then is Jesus the religious equivalent of Santa Claus?

In addition, when my niece or nephew wants me to pray, what am I supposed to do?  Make up a prayer?  I simply say, “I don’t pray, but I’ll be happy to listen to you pray.”  That’s the best I can do.  My best friend supports me in my effort to gently let my niece and nephews know that not everyone (meaning, me) is not a Christian, but she is the only one.  

My niece is ten, almost eleven, and I admit I might have told her a little too much when she was too young to understand.  Such as, when she told me her god was the best because he had been around the longest, I said, actually, he hasn’t been around the longest.  I don’t know what I should have said in that situation, though.  Even my therapist doesn’t quite understand why I find it important not to lie about god and my beliefs about the topic.  If I can lie with impunity about Santa Claus (or rather, by omission, since I have never said I believed in Santa Claus), then why can’t I do the same with Christianity and God?  

I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that it’s because I actually do think there is something harmful with indoctrinating your child about religion–especially when you don’t tell your kids everything about said religion.  For example, my sister-in-law said at Christmas that we celebrate Christmas because it’s Jesus’s birthday.  Well, no, actually, it’s not.  December 25th was chosen as Jesus’s birth date because there was a pagan feast scheduled on that day (celebrating the Sun God).  Christians decided it would be more acceptable for the locals to celebrate Jesus’s birth if it was already a pre-existing holiday.  According to this article, Jesus was born in September/October.   Another very different website comes to the same conclusion.  I have heard June and July as well as probably months of Jesus’s birth.  

Some Christians argue that when Jesus was born isn’t important.   I would concede this point if these same Christians weren’t so damn stubborn in defending nearly everything the Bible says.  There are many contradictions in the Bible itself, yet, many Christians dismiss them or find a way to rationalize them.  One thing I admire about my mother is that she went through a period of disenchantment with Christianity and started studying other religions.   She ultimately went back to Christianity, but it was with a more open mind.  She will readily admit that she doesn’t know for certain whether people of other religions will go to heaven or not.  

I guess in my personal life, I am concerned when I see religion being used as propaganda.  I want people who believe to question what they believe and see if it means something to them personally, or if they are just regurgitating what has been spoon-fed to them.  If a person is going to believe in a religion, I want that person to thoroughly examine said religion.  I also want Christians to act more Christianly, which means being more caring and merciful and less judgmental and harsh.

As for religion in my political life, I am much more strident here.   I think the conversation around abortion and gay marriage (the two hot button issues for the religious right) have been shaped by the rightwingers, and I want to retake the issues and reshape the dialogue–if you can call it that.  In this, I will agree with President Obama.  The goal should be to cut the need for abortions AND for providing for the women who make the choice to carry to term.  Any time a pro-lifer says they are against abortion, he should be asked if he’s for social programs that help poor kids or at-risk youth.  If pro-choice folks want to get down and dirty, we could air ads with children who are grown and poor and have the tag-line, “Why doesn’t my life count?”  Or something to that effect.

As for gay marriage, every time someone trots out, “It’ll harm traditional marriage which is between one man and one woman”, well, there are several ways to attack this.  First, “Divorce!  Have you seen the divorce rates in this country?”  Second, “King David had eight wives.  He slept with the wife of one of his best soldiers, and then had that soldier killed.  King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.  Abraham was married to his half-sister and then impregnated her slave at her behest.  Once Sarah got pregnant, Hagar and her son were thrown out.  All of this, apparently, happened with God’s blessings.”  Third, “Newt Gingrich.  Rudy Giuliani.  Ronald Reagan.”

For too long, the religious right has declared itself the keeper of the morality in this country.  The fact that many of them have had mistresses or same-sex affairs or, in general, broken their own moral laws, makes it even more egregious in my mind–not to mention hypocritical.  Let me make myself clear–I don’t give a fuck whom they fuck (at least not from a political stance), but I do give a fuck when they, in turn, try to dictate whom I can and cannot fuck (and how I can fuck said willing partner). 

In addition, I am fucking sick and tired of Christians in the media whining about how they are the oppressed ones.  ”Saying Happy Holidays oppresses Christianity”.  Putting aside the mind-boggling belief that shopping for Christmas presents has anything to do with the true meaning of Christmas, how is being open to other people’s religion/nonreligion oppressive of the dominant religion?

This, however, is the mentality that many people who are in the majority have.  It’s what happened when affirmative action first came into play (and still happens today).  The majority with the privileges see some of those privileges being rescinded, and the majority goes ape-shit because they view their privileges as rights.  It’s what allows white people to talk about all those foreigners taking ‘our’ jobs.  It’s why some straights feel threatened about gay marriage.  It’s why the Christian right in some southern states want to be allowed to put up the ten commandments at their capitol buildings, but who would be the first to pitch a fit if text from the Qur’an was allowed to be installed as well.

Ok.  I don’t have a solution or a conclusion, really.  What it comes down to is that I will struggle to find a way to be respectful with Christians in my personal life, but I won’t afford the same luxury to the religious right.  I view them as harmful to American politics and to our society in general.  It’s rather similar to how they view me–only I don’t have a book to back me up.  That’s fine with me.  I will use my conscience to guide me through the mindfield that is life, instead.  

That’s it.  The end.  So speaketh Minna.  Tomorrow, I will be returning to my regular random blogging.