Wednesday, March 27, 2013

My body betrays me, once again.

Illness is an asshole.

There was a time when slowly, over a period of months, my life oozed away and my body, in it's attempts to keep that life in place became a ticking time bomb.

I rose, I recuperated, I fell once again. The threat still existed but had grown weak. There came a long, long period of good health, where my body felt strong, felt functional.

This time, when the signs began to show themselves, I was prepared, and I swore I'd be pro-active and take control before this thing took hold of me. I got the meds, I got the supplements and I embarked on a self-care plan.

Sunday, the pain in my legs began and I panicked. I had a full on panic attack, terrified that once again, I had that bomb, that cluster of cells, deep inside that was ready to break free and lodge itself in my lungs, in my brain. I feared Death. I feared everything I had worked for slipping away from me.

I'm not going to die. Not yet, anyway. Not statistically sooner than anyone else.

A swirling deluge of relief, annoyance and shame washed over me when the doctor reported there was no sign of clotting.

Relief, for obvious reasons. Not dying! Yay!

Shame for the worry and fear that had manifested in myself and affected those I love.

Annoyance because my diagnosis, an injured sciatic nerve, was just another fucking issue to deal with. And annoyance because the pain, which mimics the pain that nearly killed me, is triggering as hell. Annoyance because I don't have the luxury of assuming a pulled muscle.. The leg pain could mean a few days discomfort, or it could mean a lifetime of anti-coagulants (Three Strike Rule, y'all) and higher risk of stroke, heart disease or pulmonary embolism. I don't have the luxury of saying "Meh, I'll walk it off."

I'm optimistic, though. Today, the pain is tolerable. I've faced worse than this, and so have countless others. I have hope that this is a short term injury (the most plausible cause being a slight misjudgement of a step at a friend's house that brought my foot down a little too hard) if the improvement between today and yesterday is any indication.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

@UltimateGuitar Doesn't Think Straight Girls Play.

Oh, ultimate-Guitar.com I am just about fucking done with you.

It was bad enough that I downloaded your stupid, supposedly free iPad app, which was NOT FREE because after download the app it wants you to get a paid subscription to actually access any of the fucking tabs and now every time I use your site I get prompted to download the bloody app again... NO I DON'T WANT TO DOWNLOAD YOUR STUPID FREE-NOT-FREE APP!

*deeep breath*

Where was I?

Oh yeah. If that wasn't enough, I see you're pandering to the horny frat boy set.

Stereotypically slim, large breasted model with epic cleavage and glasses poses as a music teacher. Caption reads "Learn Songs with The Teacher of your Dreams"


That's not the teacher of MY dreams.

And here I thought I was going to get to learn with Slash, or Andy McKee, or Leona Boyd.  I'm guessing they mean the teacher of your wet dreams.. In which case, I'm still clearly not their target demographic, even though I use their site frequently and have been playing guitar for pretty near 20 years now.  But I guess girls don't play guitar, or if they do, maybe UG assumes we're all Tegan & Sara or the Indigo Girls. (I'd be okay with being either, but sadly, I'm not).

In case you're wondering, I clicked and guess where it goes? Yup.  To their "free app."

Which, by the way, still isn't free.

*sigh*

Makes me miss the OLGA.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The only organs people should worry about in public bathrooms are bladders and colons.

Think about all the times you've used public washrooms. Now ask yourself how many times someone in a public washroom has openly waved their genitals at you? Not very often, I'm guessing? Now out of the probably minuscule number of people who have waved their genitals at you, how many have been trans folks?

Anectdata here, but I can unequivocally state that I have never ever had a trans woman wave her genitals at me in a public washroom. Although I can't back it up, I'm fairly confident, however that I have at some point in time shared a public washroom with a trans woman without even knowing it, my ignorance of such events likely being a result of the distinct LACK of genital waving in public washrooms.

Which is why i don't get what the big fucking deal is with letting trans people use the washroom that corresponds with their identity. Arizona, can you answer this for me?

If you accept the premise that trans women are women, full stop, you accept that there is no greater threat allowing trans women to use women's facilities. The presence of differing genitalia shouldn't enter into it. I mean, when was the last time someone told you to drop trou or present your birth certificate before allowing you to go pee?

The problem is that a lot of people don't accept this premise, which sucks, because it's really not that difficult to wrap your head around. What makes a woman a woman? Not boobs. I know dudes with nicer boobs than mine. We still accept that the profoundly flat-chested and breast cancer survivors still identify as women. Not a uterus, since I'm sure post-hysterectomy patients still define themselves as women. It's an innate sense of being a woman. It just so happens that some of the people with this sense of womanhood happen to have penises, or have had one at some point.

So instead of freaking out about the possible genitals of whomever you may be asking for an extra square of toilet paper, maybe just figure if you're in the ladies, and their in the ladies, chances are it's a lady. Then worry a little more about what's going on in your own stall.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Just some scattered thoughts on the Stuebenville case, if anyone was interested.

First, I'm glad the little shits are going to jail.  Frankly, I think the combined sentence of three years is pretty goddamned lenient.

Let's get some perspective here on just how lenient a sentence this was (and how lightly courts take rape cases)
So yeah, there's that.  Pirating CDs and attempting to obtain an education for your child warrant a worse punishment than sexually assaulting and degrading someone AND video recoding it for good measure.

Second, for those who have treated this like a harmless prank, stop yourselves right there's for I do not think you know what the word "Prank" entails.

Drawing on someone's face with a Sharpie is a Prank.

Pictured: Prank Victim. Not Pictured: Jane Doe.


Similarly, placing one's brassiere in the freezer would fit the definition of a prank, provided the victim had already divested him or herself of said brassiere.

As for the asshats who are calling out the victim on being drunk and calling this a case of "Buyer's Remorse?" and implying, or hell, outright saying that the victim cried rape out of embarrassment, I have a few things to say:
* Fuck off
* we're having trouble with word meanings again. Embarrassment is what you feel when you dance with a lampshade on your head, or you smush a grape jello shooter into a white carpet at a party (Sorry K!). Jane Doe was carried from party to party, raped repeatedly and urinated on. I think the word you were looking for was Violated. Or hell, Raped. Raped works.
* Want to cut down on all those "false accusations" that everyone gets so worked up about? (All 0.6 percent of them, so i'm basically throwing the rape apologists a bone here) Don't shame women (or anybody) for enjoying, actively seeking and participating in sexual activity. Don't base someone's worth and how you treat them on how many people they have or haven't fucked.

Lastly, to the media. Once a conviction has been handed down, it's time to drop "allegedly" from your vocabulary. After a certain point, it just makes you look like an asshole.

I'm looking at you, CNN.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

I'm not dead, but unlike Mr. Scott Weiland, I may or may not be for sale.

So, I'm not suicidal. In case anyone was wondering. I deactivated my Facebook account last week and the first thing The Well Travelled One warned me was to expect cops to show up, since apparently deleting your Facebook is considered a sign that someone is suicidal. Apparently it's a sign of being a terrorist or weirdo or something too. I have seen news stories to this effect, but am too tired and or lazy to link them.

You know who else didn't have a Facebook account? Hitler.

This actually concerned me a bit since I also took a hiatus from my kick-boxing classes for health related reasons.. It might have looked I really was withdrawing..

"I guess this would be a bad time to start selling my shit on Kajiji, right? Heh."

Anyway, I'm doing fine. Rediscovering methods of communication such as... The phone!! Holy crap. I kind of forgot that I have a pretty spectacular long distance plan.

In other news...

Painting. Renewed my efforts on a piece I started almost two years ago. It's a reproduction of a photo that the Well-Travelled one had taken on one of his adventures. I had left it alone for sometime out of frustration at my inability to paint a straight line.

Masking tape is a grand, grand invention. Except that I lost my masking tape so I had to use invisible tape. You know what sucks about invisible tape?

IT'S FUCKING INVISIBLE.

So that makes for a fabulous time trying to tell where you actually taped and didn't tape.

I'm harbouring a house full of pre- adolescent and adolescent girls. There has been much giggling and much sounds that indicate that the ceiling is probably three seconds from caving in.

It's not so bad though. I can't speak for tomorrow though, as I have been waking up with nasty, possibly sinus related headaches the last few days. Hopefully I will be able to handle the onslaught of girl noise come morning.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

A part of my childhood just died.

I'm usually not one to get all emotional about death when it comes to celebrities and other public figures, so I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I pretty much burst into tears not too long ago when I found out that one of my childhood heroes, Stompin' Tom Connors had passed away at the age of 77.

As a child, I would go to my grandparents house in Bancroft where they had a big old 8-track stereo. If my paternal grandparents were Big Band, my maternal grandparents were Grand Ol' Opry. One weekend when I was about 7 years old, my mom dug out one of the 8-tracks and played a song called "Goodbye Rubberhead." The rhyming scheme and gratuitous use of the word "boob" appealed to me. I giggled at The Ketchup song, about a potato and tomato that get married, and at the long-sufferingness of "My Brother Paul".

My mom and dad found a 60 minute tape and made me a copy of that 8-track album, Bud the Spud and other Favorites, filling air on the B-side with East Coast fiddle music. For the next year or so, when we visited our trailer during the summers my mom would cue up that cassette tape before I went to bed each night and I would fall asleep to the music of Stompin' Tom. I held onto that tape until I was in my early 20's, when it was lost during one of many moves.

He came to Midland a few years ago to play the rec center, but at the time the ticket prices were out of my reach, or perhaps I had I unbreakable obligations to attend to, but for whatever reason, I missed this show and I swore I would see the man perform live while there was still time.

That time has run out and I don't mind saying I'm a little heartbroken.

R.I.P Mr. Connors