Hate on tape

Up to 14 High School Boys Rape, Torture Developmentally Disabled Girl, Then Make and Sell DVD of the Rapes
The assault and gang rape was then viewed 9000 times on YouTube. Via Witchy Woo

Abuse Behind Closed Doors
Susan Still's husband Ulner directed their son to record one instance of abuse that lasted almost an hour. He was sentenced to 36 years in prison, and Susan has released the tape to increase law enforcement awareness.

I wish I had something profound to say about these things.
Unfortunately, I'm not that profound, I'm just

Mad
Upset
Sick
Horrified
Angry
Tired
Pissed
Irate
Stressed
Seething
Depressed
Furious

Why?

What sort of post could illicit the following responses?
















I'll tell you what kind. The kind where an 86 year old woman posts a video to let subscribers know that her husband, who has been sharing his memories of WWII with others via You Tube, has passed away. That's what kind.

Fuckers.

No means No, asshats

Dear TruGreen ChemLawn,

I've told you twice to stop calling; take me off the call list; put me on the do not call list. I have ignored your incessant daily calls that have shown up on caller ID for over a week now. Apparently I have yet to perform the secret magic action that gets you to stop harrassing me (I have the feeling that there isn't one, though, short of legal action). If my daughter had not picked up the phone before I could say "no, it's those asshats again", I would not have had to tell you a third time, and before you could even open your damn mouth to read your sales pitch to me.

Is this your idea of marketing? Seriously, get a fucking clue.

Even if I wanted someone to dump that shit on my lawn, you have absofuckingloutely guaranteed that it would not be you, ever, who does it. Which is a damn good thing, because apparently this kind of crap is representative of just your lesser offenses. I mean, really! In a Google search, the second site result for TruGreen ChemLawn and the third site result for TruGreen ChemLawn do a pretty good job of exposing just what an all-around shit company you are.

Given that, pissing someone off over a silly thing like rabid marketing calls is a pretty dumb thing to do, doncha think? You don't really want those sites overtaking the top spot on Google in a search for TruGreen ChemLawn now, do you?

Reading...

Lots of stuff. Too much stuff. Bad stuff. Frustrating stuff. Infuriating she-said/she-said/he-said/they-said stuff.

Aw, stuff it.

Arrgh

I don't even know what to write. Woman practices safe sex. Method fails. Tries to get EC. Entire state of Ohio treats her like a criminal with a contagious disease, but would welcome her with open arms if she was married. Or raped. Or married and raped. And it's all just so mind-blowingly assinine, this rabid judgemental hatred of women through denial of basic health care.

Rant of the day

Dear FepBlue,

It's really, really bothersome when you send me someone else's coverage disclosure certificate. They may need this to prove coverage for prior conditions when enrolling in a new plan. Like, right the hell now.

I wouldn't know, though. Through the wonders of internet phone directories, I've been trying to call the true recipient for the past day and get no answer or machine. Hopefully that's because they are out slaying health insurance executives for recreation, not because they are on life support or something.

It's also bothersome that I have someone else's insurance ID number. I wouldn't know what to do with it, but that's just lucky for them. Well, barring the whole life support thing, of course. Perhaps I will be just as lucky if you mail my information to someone else? Information security: it's like the lottery and you too may already be a winner!

Every time I go through something like this with a corporate entity, which happens almost monthly, it infuriates me to no end. I get to spend lots of time trying to correct your mistake. That is, of course, after Googling a phone number because your actual web site seems to be allergic to such things. After sitting on hold and finally being conntected with a human, of course, I'm often told it's not really your mistake. "It's a computer error, thanks for letting us know," you usually blurt out uncomfortably, before attempting to move on to your next timed incoming call.

Rarely, if ever, does someone acknowledge the larger problem without being walked through it by someone getting paid $0 to do your damn job. Is this person being denied coverage for medical services until they get this certificate? Are you overnighting them a new one pronto, or not? How does their information come to my house and what department care you going to refer me to who will act like they are going to look into this and make sure it doesn't happen again? How many insurance companies do I have to go though before I find one that doesn't display gross incompetence within 6 months? Do you really even give a shit? And aren't my trick questions not friggin' hilarious?

Health care. What an oxymoronic hoot, huh?

Hey, guess what, I'm driving half an hour to this person's home with the certificate. If they are not there, I will knock on neighbors doors until it gets into the right hands. I do not do this for you, healthcare capitalists, I do it because they might need this thing now, and you can't even pretend like you give a shit except in a damn ad campaign.

Oh, and bite me.

Pop quiz time!

Fuck standards. Anyone's standards.

Hot or not?
Rad or bad?

or is all this just really fucking sad?

Instructions:
This is a timed quiz. You will have 3 minutes to rate 30 statements about me. Mark the corresponding bubble on your answer sheet with a # 2 pencil. Fill in the circle completely, without straying outside the circle, because straying is treasonous. If you change your mind, erase your first mark completely and consider yourself indecisive and therefore unworthy to judge others. This quiz will be graded on a strict pass/fail basis, and counts for a pure 99.44% of your final grade.

Without having to regard me as an autonomous human being with unique experiences, preferences, and goals in life, determine what each of the following statements Say About Me Emphatically, and score according to the following scale:

9 = Rad! (silly, there is no in between) 0 = Bad!

---

Start!

1. I don't use cologne
2. but do use moisturizer
3. I don't shave anything
4. but do tweeze certain hairs
5. I don't wear a bra indoors at home, or on short trips out
6. but do wear a bra outdoors and on longer trips out
7. I don't wear make-up
8. but do generally put on spot concealer as needed when I leave the house
9. I don't wear nail polish
10. but do keep my nails trimmed
11. I don't blow dry, curl, color, or perm my hair
12. but do use hair gel
13. I don't use tooth whiteners
14. but do use mouthwash
15. I don't wear jewelry
16. but do think it can be appreciated aesthetically on its own
17. I don't think weddings are all that
18. but did have one and enjoyed it
19. I don't do blow jobs
20. but do have heterosexual sex
21. I don't wear heeled shoes
22. but do go barefoot as much as possible
23. I don't wear short skirts
24. but do love to wear cotton camisoles under button-down shirts
25. I don't wear hose
26. but do wear underwear
27. I didn't breast feed
28. but did gave birth vaginally
29. I don't spend a lot of time in the shower
30. but do bathe more than once a week

Bzzz! Time's up!

---

Extra credit:
Tell me what exactly any of these things have to do with you.
You have all the time in the world.

---

Scoring:

• Add up all answers according to the number you used to rate me.
  Remember, 9 points for each Rad, 0 points for each Bad!
• Divide the total by 30. This is your final score.
• Look the result up on the following chart to double-check your ability to judge:

0-1 Manxome is patriarchy's best customer and is ruining it for us all! Oh, and you can't stand snark.
2-3 According to you, you are way better than manxome. What a relief for you!
4-5 Obviously manxome is confused. Tell her what to do! Stat! After all, no one has done that in at least 2 hours.
6-7 Aw, always a princess, never a queen. If manxome keeps working hard to present whatever image is deemed appropriate by whoever is deeming things appropriate at the moment and attaching whatever meaning they are attaching to it this week, irrespective of her stubborn preference for making the best personal choices she can in a society that sells conformity for profit and true choice for none, maybe someday she can be queen. Right, and maybe you think she believes that, too.
8-9 Manxome is Rad-ified as Queen and Grand Poobah of the Feminist Purity Ball! Sacrificing ceremony at 5 p.m. Bring a covered side dish.
10 There's no such thing as a perfect 10, you fucking cheater.

Grading:
Yes, it's instant real time grading! Of you! Isn't grading others fun?

If you scored:

10 Bad! You've been expelled.
0-9 Sad! You get an F, for not getting it.

If you skipped the taking the test, believing that it's hypocritical to judge random women based solely on their individual choices and nothing else, which have squat to do with you anyway, no matter what group you do or do not align with, you get an Afucking+!

Extra credit: You're kidding, right?

WTF Sunday cavalcade

"You are a sex offender, and you did it to a child," said the judge. Horrendous, yes. Deserves prison time. Lots of it. The judge even says so! Alas, it is not to be.

"I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society is not misplaced," sayeth the judge, as she sentences to him probation. And without a shred of irony in her voice, I'm sure.

"That doesn't make you a hunter. You do not fit in that category," she muses. Why doesn't he fit into that category? Why, it's because he's too short. [tip: Twisty]

That's right. He might get picked on in prison, not because he's a child molesting sick sack of shit, but because he's not seen as quite the manly hunter type and oh GAWD the poor thing, that totally trumps protecting little girls and the rest of society from the likes of him.

Do not fear, you poor short child molesting dudes, help is on the horizon in the form of a poorly executed seque. You may soon be able to conceal not only your height, but conceal yourself altogether with the invisibility cloak. [tip: Gordo]

Brought to you by reasearchers who read too much science fiction and backed by the Pentagon, an agency with a similar detachment from reality, you can be assured that if anyone ever picks on you for your stature again, you can just don your cloak and seek revenge on a massive, unaccountable scale. Wow! Just imagine what 'Jason'[16] could do with that!

Cloaked in invisiblility, but without benefit of a creepy invisibility cloak, we make our next awkward seque into the world of hot news on totally hot people who are way hotter than you, as if you never heard that one before. What can be hotter than that? Why, they're reproducing! It's hotter than hot, I tell you! It's scorching! And they won't let us point 200 cameras at it to document the scorching hotness of the hot, hot newborn!

Yes, Brangelina is here, as if you didn't already know that, despite being stranded in the tundra for the past week. "Angelina Jolie gave birth to Brad Pitt's daughter Saturday in Africa", the AP notes.

Tomorrow: Brad Pitt, backed by the MRA, has Angelina arrested for keeping "his" daughter captive for 9 months. Since she doesn't fit into the category of short non-hunter, she gets the chair.

16 sorry volty dudes, no linky for you.

Thursday is "Don't futz with me" Day

1. The ice cream truck skipped my street.

2. My cell phone battery has given me the brush-off.

3. Daughter's teacher is now trying to teach my daughter the art of shutting up and taking it or be reprimanded for it, no matter what "it" is.
3a. Said teacher has never heard of basic communication,
3b. and sucks at basic grammar, for that matter. ("Was" is not plural!)
3c. Principal is no damn help: Thanks loads for empty gesture! Should have gone with my first option and let my rage fly at the dipshit teacher and demand to know why they want to train her to be a compliant victim.

4. My piddly 401k wants me to die: Thank goodness for Social Security. Hahahaha!

5. I can't even get weeds to grow: Unless it's in gravel. I can get lost of stuff to grow where it's not supposed to grow.

Next?

I'd rather be in the Carribbean.

Don't futz with me today, unless you want me to take all that out on you.

This has been a public service announcement from the pissed-off broadcasting system. This is not a test.

Late Monday Randomness: Exploding Edition

PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE:
Spotted Elephant sighs, Oh, It's Hard To Be a Man when one laments out just how hard it is:

Here's a situation - A man and woman, both intoxicated, go home together and end up having some sort of sexual intercourse. ...

Men and women should enjoy the same notion of responsibility as well as privilege when it comes to sex.

Here's the situation: You can talk to me about my responsibility when I have the same privilege as you. Until then, stop whining and start acting, you know, responsible.

PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE, BUT YOU JUST ROLL YOUR EYES:
Gordo finds Malkin Outraged Again because the Texas Rangers had a fundrasier in celelebration of Cinco de Mayo, and snarks:

Other Texas Rangers promotions not mentioned on ESPN include Hot Dog Night (May 3), $1 Ice Cream Night (May 7), and Baseball Card Night (May 25). It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya!

Because that's just some great snark.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOU WONDER IF ALL OF HUMANITY DIED IN AN EXPLOSION:
zuzu says This Has To Be One of The Saddest Things I’ve Read Lately

“When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ ” said Paul Guinther, Jared’s father. “I told my wife not to worry about it. They’re not going to take anybody in the service who’s autistic.”

Yes, a recruiter cornered and signed up a teenager with autism. Something for my nephew to look forward to.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE GREAT GRAPHICS MAKES MY HEAD EXPLODE:
Jill's Contra-Contraception covers a NYT article with a kickass graphic.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE MY HEART EXPLODE:
The people I spoke to last night for 2:38:59. I hereby challenge the one I spoke with for 98% of that call, along with my mother and my friend Linda, to a talk-off. Even odds. It will be brutal!
P.S. Best phone call ever.

Blogging for Angry Atheist Whackjobs Day!

I don’t pretend to be as eloquent as PZ Myers when, in all my atheistic glory, I express a negative critique or positive rebuttal whenever someone publishes a stream of illogical drek somewhere. I just get angry.

Marc Gellman says he is Trying to Understand Angry Atheists. Attempts to address the commentary in detail only made this atheist, well, angry.

Interesting how that all works.

The short answer, then, is I am not atheist because I’m angry, I’m angry because atheists are so often purposely misrepresented by the theist majority. We believe in nothing, we’re not civil, we’re lashing out against some past hurt, we lack discipline, we ask little of life.

I know this because Marc Gellman said so, for if he acknowledged that atheism is quite simply a lack of belief in gods and nothing more, he wouldn’t have an article to write, would he?

And even though he admits to assumptions that are “condescending and a large generalization”, he doesn’t “mean it that way”. As if claims of intent excuse actions.

Gellman says he “would ask for forgiveness from the angry atheists who write to me if I thought it would help”.

That sounds like an excuse to not try to understand atheists at all. He just wants to anger them, then ask why they get so gosh darned angry.

Oh, please (a rant in F minor)

Toddlers diagnosed with bipolar

Because, you know, those two year-olds are really good at communicating all those subjective experiences so that you can determine whether it's bipolar, ADHD, giftedness, or any number of other things with similar and crossover traits. But hey, the money's in the bipolar, not the giftedness, so why not "be safe" and put them on meds that can really screw things up for them, right?

Our son is gifted. He could read kid's books on his own and do addition and subtraction well before he got out of diapers. He can also be extremely sensitive, perfectionist, not get along well with peers, get easily frustrated and take criticism and direction of any sort way too personally, live in his head, etc. So, when a psychiatrist saw him because he "wanted someone to talk to", which means that to see the therapist he needs to go through the med guy first, it's no wonder that his need to feel understood in the perhaps context of giftedness was not taken into consideration, but my bipolar diagnosis and things like ADHD were, because that's his thing.

Thing is, I know he's gifted. I do not know he's bipolar or ADD (he had nothing that could be taken as H whatsoever). In fact, his "quirks" can easily be explained by that we know, which is that's he's gifted. Bipolar or ADD didn't make sense. Still, the psychiatrist wanted to put him on an ADHD and antidepressant med, which we reluctantly did out of being hit with it unprepared, and out of an absolute refusal on my part to add mood stabilizers "just in case" he might be bipolar (good gawd). I/we basically said look, if for some reason he is, we know how to look out for the signs (which of course didn't exist, but could be triggered by the SSRI), but if we see no change, we're dropping the whole thing.

And we didn't, so we did.

He still got to see the therapist, who he liked, but eventually pushed too much to make it a family affair while not giving a one good reason why. All I could tell was that he was just conversing one on one, enjoying the uninterrupted time to share all the things he thinks about, a bit of a respite from struggling like he always has to fit in to a world where his giftedness makes him different and misunderstood.

With her and the doc, giftedness was not on their radar as an explanation for anything. His best outlet for that is, and continues to be, placement in a gifted program. The teacher gets it, and his peers are like him, instead of thinking he's weird for always thinking and being philosophical and trying to solve all the mysteries of the universe and absorbing knowledge with glee. I also ramble, and talk conceptually a lot, and he soaks that stuff up like crazy. It makes him feel understood and a connection on a different level.

Therapist did not get it. Doc only knows how to prescribe things as an answer for anything, and doesn't know how to say, "you don't need this". I'll let the world know when I come across a psychiatrist who comes across a person and says they dosn't need meds. Until then, after my vast experience with all two of them, they can all flip off.

Bipolar toddlers. Give me a break.

My ______ credentials

My credentials? You won't find them here. I've never much liked aligning myself with official groups when it comes to ideology. The moment I come close, it feels like I must now be conscious of how I represent "the cause". This doesn't leave a lot of room for dissent on specific things. It doesn't allow much room for personal growth. I may lean a little one way or heavily another, but "cause purity" just plain doesn't work for me. I owe it to myself be true to my growth and my self-expression, not to conform to someone else's list of do's and don'ts.

I could also care less about your credentials. I judge you for the content, not the label or how well you conform to it. I read what inspires me, or informs me, or allows me to identify, or offers the opportunity to blow off steam. Sometimes I take part in comments, other times I stay far away from them. Your blog either offers something for me, or it doesn't, but I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm there because there's content that speaks to me now, dialogue that engages me at this point in time. If it didn't offer something for me, I would quite simply not be there.

Want credentials? I don't offer them here. If you want to know how I think, read the blog (and see that I'm still trying to figure it out myself). It will either offer you something, or it won't. Simple as that.

Why?

A 32 year-old Chicago woman has been granted a license to marry Tom Nissin, who is serving life in prison for the murder of Brandon Teena and two others in 1993. They have never met in person. Their knowledge of each other consists solely of letters and short phone calls, not to mention a movie called "Boys Don't Cry":

When she saw the film, Mirth said, she identified with the characters who played Nissen and his co-defendant, John Lotter, who is on death row. She had grown up "in a small, stupid town in Indiana," she said, and escaped by running with a rough crowd.

"These were people I would hang out with in real life," she said.

Never mind the whole psychological fuck-upedness of people who enter into this sort of thing. Right now all I want to know is: Why can a convicted felon enter into a contract while serving their term?

Damn missionary people

Dear Mormon robots,

It seems that on a bi-weekly basis you come through in case anyone's changed their silly little minds and wants to convert after all. Seriously, your inability to take "no" for an answer or "no solicitors" as meaning "yeah you, asshole" doesn't bode well for your keen marketing plan. So, as I deal with a ringing phone in my private residence, you lean on the doorbell. How quaint. Surely if I must not have heard you, or I would have rushed to the door to answer your bidding toot sweet! Next time you're ignored, perhaps it would not be a great idea to tell your partner in slime as you slither off, "those damn people won't answer the door." Such language! What Would Joseph Smith Say?

Idiots-in-law: Racism (part 1 of an endless series)

As far as examples of in-law-idiocy goes, I got lots of 'em. Waveflux's post Black. White. And asparagus., and the resulting comments at Shakesperare's Sister, reminded me (as if I need reminding) about one idiotic aspect some of them share: Racism.

When my husband told my father-in-law that we would be having our first child, he expressed his joy and relief by saying that he would finally have a white grandson. His newest grandson "sure is cute and smart, for someone who's park black." My sister-in-law is on her brother's shit list for telling him he only married his Filipino wife because he couldn't get a white woman.

It's frustrating confronting any of them on it because it doesn't bother them at all. "You're completely racist," someone would point out to my father-in-law, to which he'd reply "Yeah, I know," as if you just told him his shirt was blue. Roughly half of his seven (known) offspring are the same way and, not surprisingly, are supreme assholes all-around. It has been more fodder for my casual hypothesis that kids either turn out a lot like their parents, or do everything possible to be completely unlike them.

Pet Language Peeve of the Week

"I have sex with..."

I see it termed this way every once in a while in discussions regarding sex. It bugs the shit out of me for some reason. A mutually consenting phrase would be "We have sex..." That's something you do together, whereas I->verb->whatever is so one-way. See, even the little arrows show how that one-way thing works!

We know you verbed, but did the other person verb back? Did you verb together? If you're the only one who verbed, you could just as easily say that you verbed something that doesn't even have the ability to verb in the same manner, like a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps you verb with a vacuum, but it's unlikely that you and the vacuum verbed together. "The vacuum and I, we verb. It's beautiful."

Ick, right? Well, that's how I feel about "I have sex with..."

War on Women

Any good "War On" campaign is not complete without bestowing enemy combatant status, and therefore the most torturous acts, upon the casualties of such abstract concepts. The War on Poverty punishes the poor. The War on Drugs incarcerates the user. The War on Terror tortures civilians.

The War on Women is not a campaign so much as one of the true bedrocks of society. It is a war without end, as there will always be women to treat as enemy combatants as long as there are women.

Tortuous acts abound. A woman, who was unconscious during her sexual assault, is threatened with incarceration and the dropping of charges against her assailants because she refuses to be tortured with images of her assault. Since no memory of it existed before, the act only serves to satisfy the voyeruistic pleasures of the reality TV hungry set as they examine every torturous reaction from her. She is punished for not having memory of her original torture, so she must be made to go through it in every detail. While others watch.

Another woman had the audacity to write bad chacks and be pregnant. What a wonderful excuse to shackle her during anesthesia-free labor and produce sciatic nerve damage and persistent back pain! Not all bad-check writers are sentenced to such torture. Just women giving birth.

The war escalates.

Homeland Insecurity Alert

Fort Lauderdale teens work tirelessly to eradicate homelessness in their area, receive recognition from the Milwaukee Police Department for defending helpless trash can in the process.

Because getting fucked once is just not enough

Via Shakes, a rant about the South Dakota abortion ban that nails it on the head:

It’s insulting. It’s belittling. It’s unfair. It’s infuriating. And none of that matters to the people who would seek to protect a life that doesn’t exist at the expense of mine, which does.

The whole spiel gets one big "ditto" from me. This crap burns me up every time, and it is precisely because what Shakes says is true: it seeks to ensure that women "have fewer rights and less value under the law than an unwanted fetus," and strip away the autonomy of all women. All women.

It's not as women aren't already devalued. It is that we have not been devalued enough to have been acceptably proclaimed defeated.

-

My own rant comes from a quote in the story from Republican Sen. Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown:

Rape should be punished severely, he said, but the amendment is unfair to “some equally innocent souls who have no chance to stand and defend themselves.”

Lee, fuck the hell off. If I get to be an "innocent soul" who deserves a chance to "stand and defend" myself in your righteous scenario, then why the hell are you for taking that right away? Where was the support that would have allowed me to effectively "stand and defend" when, against my will, my virginal, "innocent soul" was put in the back of some guy's car and raped in the first place? The kind of support where someone like you and millions of other men step up and take to task others for their sexist entitlement behavior, instead of legislating "severe punishment" against the female victims of said shits?

Why, oh why, the fuck am I having to defend myself, against impossible odds, against some rapist shit at all? Why is it left to be my own damn fault if I chose not to risk further violence against me, in order to try to gather evidence to provide you with someone to severly punish? What value are words that say "rape should be punished severly" when it's not? When it really should be prevented severely? Why do I get the feeling this is about "standing" for and "defending" male privilege?

Lee, and the rest of you sick shits, the first and only chance I had to "stand" and "defend" my very self was the day I got an abortion. Obviously that was one chance too many in your mind. I, on the other hand, am
not.
letting.
that.
happen.