I got one of those “Stop! Read This!! This is very important!!!!!!!” emails the other day. It had a really disturbing picture of a woman’s breast in it. I don’t normally get bothered by these things, but this picture actually made me physically nauseous. It was something about how you always need to wash brand new underwear because some lady went to South America and came back with a bizarre rash, that wasn’t a rash!!!! OMG!!!!!
Of course, the first thing I did was to head on over to Snopes to check out the validity of this forwarded email. The email was an urban legend and the photo included was a fake. I was pretty sure that was the case, but I wanted that validity. I then replied back to everyone who got it that it was a fake and gave the address for Snopes, so hopefully these people might realize that all of this crap that comes into their mailboxes isn’t real.
I don’t get these types of emails very often, but I always wonder about the people who come up with this stuff. I mean what is the purpose of these types of inflammatory chain letters? Is the purpose to incite fear in the people who get them - so that they are a bit more mistrusting of the world around them? Or is it some kind of test to find out how easy it is to fool people?
I don’t know, but I just spent the last hour reading about all kinds of tales at snopes.com. Whoops.
November 14th, 2007
Lee Iacocca has balls.
Here’s a link to the first chapter of his new book Where Have All The Leaders Gone?
From Chapter 1: Had Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
June 10th, 2007
Three things caught my eye today.
First, the FDA has approved the sale of silicone breast implants in the US again. Personally, I have weird feelings about implants. I think they are fine for women who need or want reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy or anything else that causes a woman to lose a breast or breasts. But, I really wish a lot of women didn’t think it was necessary to get implants for “cosmetic” purposes. I wish more women were happier with their bodies so they wouldn’t feel the need to get ginormous breasts in order to feel happy about themselves.
Maybe I am just saying that because I have larger than normal boobs. But I still don’t quite understand why guys like the big boobies. Is it because it goes back to some kind of code in their DNA that says bigger boobs means better breastfeeding? Or do some women feel that it is easier to be sexier when they have large breasts?
I mean I know that a lot of people in this country are very critical of a woman’s appearance. Heck, I am finally coming to the realization that part of my depression stems from my weight. I mean, I know that I don’t feel good about myself because I am not as thin as I used to be. I am realizing now that one reason why I don’t like to go out is because I am fat and it’s hard to find stylish clothes that fit and are not frumpy and would actually look good on me. Of course, it also never really helped that I grew up and live in Hawaii.
Well, I mean that is not the only reason why I want to lose weight. A lot of it just has to do with health and especially diabetes. Both my mom and my grandma have diabetes and I just know that unless I really get my weight under control, I will probably develop it too and I really don’t want that to happen.
In other breast news - a woman was kicked off of a Delta flight for breast feeding her baby.
Gillette said she was discreetly breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter on Oct. 13 as their flight prepared to leave Burlington International Airport. She said she was seated by the window in the next-to-last row, her husband was seated between her and the aisle and no part of her breast was showing.
A flight attendant tried to hand her a blanket and told her to cover up, Gillette said. She declined, telling the flight attendant she had a legal right to breast-feed her baby.
Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached and said the flight attendant had asked that the family be removed from the flight, Gillette said. She said she didn’t want to make a scene and complied.
Okay, so what is wrong with a woman breast feeding? That’s what they are there for!
Another thing that caught my eye was a letter from Planned Parenthood about some pharmacists refusing to fulfill prescriptions for birth control pills based on the pharmacist’s personal opinion on birth control. Basically, if a pharmacist finds birth control against their beliefs some states allow them to not fulfill a legal prescription because they don’t approve of it.
From the Planned Parenthood letter -
So far this session, lawmakers in 22 states have introduced 54 bills that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill BC rx’s based on their personal moral or religious objections.
Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Dakota all have laws that specifically permit a pharmacist to deny certain rx’s, including oral contraceptives.
Most of the bills and laws allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a BCP - despite the fact that 98% of US women who have had sex have used contraception.
What the hell? I will admit that I tried to find more information on this and wasn’t able to independently verify the states and the bills, but I just did a quick search, so no I didn’t try very hard to verify or refute the claims, but I don’t see why Planned Parenthood would just make up the states and the bills.
More information on the campaign can be found at this link.
I still am pretty shocked about this. I mean, what right does a pharmacist have to tell a woman how she should live her life. A pharmacist’s job is to fulfill prescriptions. I wonder if those same pharmacists would object to filling viagra prescriptions? Probably not since it’s a man’s right to fuck all he wants right? - but not a woman’s apparently.
You know what else is appalling? President Bush appointed Eric Keroack as the head of family planning in the Department of Health and Human Services. Who is Eric Keroack you say? Well, he’s an OB/GYN who heads A Woman’s Concern in Massachusetts. He is a man who believes that birth control is demeaning to women. Excuse me? Demeaning to women? Give me a break. Oh, let me just quote part of the article.
The Bush administration, to the consternation of its critics, has picked the medical director of an organization that opposes premarital sex, contraception and abortion to lead the office that oversees federally funded teen pregnancy, family planning and abstinence programs.
The appointment of Eric Keroack, a Marblehead, Massachusetts, obstetrician and gynecologist, to oversee the federal Office of Population Affairs and its $283 million annual budget has angered family-planning advocates.
Keroack currently is medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a Christian nonprofit. The Dorchester, Massachusetts-based organization runs six centers in the state that offer free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and counseling.
It also works to “help women escape the temptation and violence of abortion,” according to its statement of faith. And it opposes contraception, saying its use increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates.
“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness,” its contraception policy reads in part.
Great. The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world. Why? Because Americans are prudes and the government just wants to teach abstinence as the only means of birth control. Give me a break. Teens are teens, they are going to have sex. Some people might say that the abstinence thing is working because teen pregnancy rates declined between 1990 and 2000. Here’s another take on why that might be.
I just get so angry when I hear about these things. It’s like those people who are opposed to abortion. It’s like they think that women will stop having abortions if abortion was illegal. Um, No. Women had abortions before it was legal and guess what? Many women died and many women were mutilated from these procedures. Teaching people about birth control is not going to encourage them to have sex - but apparently that’s the opinion of the group that is led by Keroack. What kind of backwards thinking is this?
This also gets me wondering. What kind of country do these people want to live in? Do they want to live in a world like in The Handmaid’s Tale?
November 18th, 2006
Alleged al Qaeda agent Padilla claims torture
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) - Lawyers for alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla have asked a Florida judge to dismiss the terrorism case against him, saying he was tortured and force-fed psychedelic drugs while held at a U.S. military brig for more than 3-1/2 years.
“The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately, the loss of will to live,” Padilla’s attorney’s said in the motion for dismissal filed in Miami federal court earlier this month.
“Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla,” his lawyers said. “Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”
Gosh, I just LOVE this country. Citizens can be held without being charged under the guise of terrorism, the administration just suspended habeas corpus and citizens can be spied on, er I mean wiretapped, without a warrant. Our press isn’t as “free” as we think it is and of course, torture is now legal if the administration “suspects” you are a terrorist.
This country is turning into a fascist state and the best part about it is that pretty much NOBODY CARES!
November 1st, 2006
After reading through some of the support forums at Wordpress, I think I have figured out where most of my comment Spam is coming from. I am now clearing out over 20 spam comments a day - except for today - I had 72! Jeebus. It seems that what spammers do now is something called trackback spam. So, they spambot doesn’t actually leave a comment, but does a trackback to whatever post from a webpage.
The only good thing about it is that the more trackbacks you have, the higher your search ranking becomes. Not that my search ranking would be low anyway, I mean come one, if you are searching for me, this is pretty much the only page that should come up.
How do you defeat these spammers? Well, to do that requires that you turn your trackbacks or pings off. Wordpress users - this can be done in your control panel under ”manage” I believe, I’d have to double check, but to really make sure it is turned off - when you are writing a post - in your sidebar there should be something called “discussion” and you would need to make sure that “allow pings” is unchecked. I used to have the ”allow pings” turned on, but now that I turned it off, I have the arduous task of manually editing all of my other posts to turn it off. Ach.
October 9th, 2006
