If you found me again, it's because you came looking or I left you a trail to follow. Thank you for playing along so far; I wanted to begin again, with just the people who cared to take up the thread that's been broken for so long. Comments are screened and won't be unscreened; I will re-add anyone who was there before and makes a request here. If you're new, tell me how you found me and something I should know about you, and we'll see where that takes us.

• Support and actively work towards providing universal health care in this country.
  
  If you want these children born, no matter what disabilities they may have, and you are willing to dictate that no-one else should have another option, then be prepared to put your money where your mouth is for the duration of those children's lives, to provide them with all the care they need to give them as much of a life as they can have. Yes, that does mean multiple heart surgeries and implants and life support and round-the-clock care, and all those other expensive procedures won't come out of the parents' pockets alone. Why? Because it is morally repugnant to force someone to do something against their wishes and then turn around and charge them for the "privilege" on top of it. Because if you try it, you will wind up with women dying after trying to self-abort to prevent having to beggar themselves to pay for the medical care of children they would not have chosen to give birth to, who may accomplish nothing in their brief and pain-ridden lives *except* bankrupting their parents.



• Support and actively work toward providing everyone with the ability to earn a living wage.
  
  Yes, that means more of your money towards the education of children that aren't yours, including poor ones and non-white ones. It means you can't just pull money out for a voucher to send your child to a private school while the public schools where the other children go gets poorer and less adequate to educate them. It means a higher minimum wage. It means providing paid time off for people with families to go tend to emergencies with the children. It means providing good childcare options, both for the children whose families kept them and the un-aborted whose families will give them up to foster care. Our foster care system, especially for the broken children, is horrible. You want more children born? Then you get to stop whining and pitch in to help support them. As opposed to protesting at the clinic before they're born and then complaining about welfare and socialism afterward.



• Support comprehensive sex education and to make sure contraception is available, taught about, provided.
  
  Don't like that? Too bad. People have sex. They've had sex for as long as there've been two sexes, and they're going to continue to have sex.



• Support tougher sentences and more diligent prosecution for the perpetrators of sexual crimes.
  
  If murder nets you a death sentence, rape of a person over the age of consent should get you a choice between castration and life without possibility of parole. Rape of a child under the age of consent should get you straight castration, no choice in the matter. Why? Because not all sex is consensual. Not all conceptions can be prevented by just telling women to keep their legs together. Teach your boys that no always, always means no unless you've agreed on a different safeword beforehand. Stop giving the wink wink nudge and the sly chatter about conquests and how this woman or that is "hot for it." Make rape as repugnant to them as murder. And less of the anti-female bullshit about "she was asking for it, wearing that" and "but she slept with ___ other people." Sleeping with a hundred other people doesn't mean she is obligated to sleep with you. If you want women to not conceive unless they're ready to raise a child, control the behaviour of the men who impregnate women. Decent men will use contraception if she's not ready to conceive, and they won't force her to have sex. For the rest, treat them like the criminals they are, because their offspring, if she doesn't want it, becomes another un-aborted child for you to help support.

Funny, how I haven't yet heard any vehement pro-lifers espousing all of these. Can it be that all the loudest of them want is all of the power to make all women do what the pro-lifers want, and none of the burden of responsibility for what happens after?

Is there anyone left who still needs an invite code for Dreamwidth? They've just generously given me two; first comment, first served.

... and this little guy will soon be coming home to me.



I am obliged to point out that he has brothers (and possibly sisters!) and many many fascinating friends over at elisem's current sale. Your pocketbook may not forgive you, but them's the risks you take, right? ;)

I have resumed my wonderful weekly veggie box subscription (Papa Spud's, for those few of you in the Raleigh area) and today is my first delivery.

Dinner tonight, therefore, is whole-wheat pasta tossed with browned butter, tomato, and lovely fresh tatsoi, with a little grated cheese because, well, tasty, tasty protein. I still have sugar snap peas, yellow squash, eggplant, and a pint of strawberries to look forward to as well. This is going to be good.

Which is also a contest entry. It's difficult, by the way, to make something as abstract as a fractal carry a set theme like the good vs evil concept. I think I managed. What do you folks think?



Crossposted from my site; you can comment either here or there.

AUSTIN — A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.

The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Easier for voting?

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”



A: Asian-descent voters are Americans too. What she really means, therefore, is "easier for generic white people to deal with."

B: Her lack of faith in the reading skills and problem-solving skills of generic white people is noted.

C: What we really need is clearly a return to the days when Immigration officials renamed people when they entered the country! Yes!

D: Life is going to change fairly dramatically when her generation is displaced in positions of power, and I can't wait to see it happen.

This shares a common origin with the fractal on the poem post, quite obviously. It took some fiddling to get there, though; the head area did not want to come clear at first, preferring to hide behind that swathe of misty black. (Well, what did I expect?) But I figured it out, finally, and now we have Oracle 3, unveiled.

This is the fault of many people, but it began with elisem.

They are always she:
untold foreseeings, like physical babes, usurp the womb.
They come draped in the same potentiality
as any other gestation, each secretly scheming
to be, if not an only child, then a last one.

She nurses them out of her self,
rocks herself back and forth around them,
speaks them to soothe them, and is herself quieted--and not alone.

Every birthing ends in giving the child away.

( Sarah McLachlan - Fallen )

I’m tired. Really tired. The relentless beat won’t let me slow down, though, and I think it’s the only thing keeping me moving right now. I’ve run out of places to put boxes—as half my stuff was already in boxes, occupying the available space—and while I don’t really have that much to pack, finding ways to pack it is definitely a challenge. I may just resort to cleaning around the boxes now, and picking up some more boxes later, to be packed while/when my father and brother have cleared the room of the already-packed boxes.

I need to:

• re-box my knitting supplies


• fill and reseal the half-empty boxes that never actually got unpacked all the way


• do the dishes and pack them away


• finish the last load of laundry


• gather the things in the laundry room and bathroom


• vacuum once the boxes are gone


• pack the things on my desk, which includes my good speakers, so I'm procrastinating

I also desperately want a shower and to tend to my hair so it doesn't look like someone dragged me through a bush backwards! I may do that first, I think, or at least second, while the current load of laundry dries.

This has been crossposted from my site: you can respond here or there.