Em and the Possibilities There are no guarantees in life…only the possibilities

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

Hat tip to Tuttle SVC for the backstory and to Connect the Dots for the original link.

This is your golden opportunity, Dear Readers. Ask me anything in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

This post brought to you by “Clobbered by homework” and the letters F and U

…reading sources that you may not only disagree with, but that leave you slack-jawed in amazement. As I mentioned in Holly’s comment the other day, the title of my paper for sociology is Ethnic Prejudice and Homeschooling.

The vast majority of the homeschooling websites I’ve looked at advocate for genuine multicultural study, mentioning one of the things I love most about homeschooling: The ability to spend as long as you want on a subject. There are lesson plans, book recommendations, and suggestions on how to make it a more vivid, real experience for your student.

And then there are the other sites. It’s obvious that I would need to look at the websites of prejudiced people in order to collect some of my data. When you research a subject such as this, you put up your mental shield, expecting to be introduced to statements that you find repulsive. You expect racist ignorance, and you expect some of the websites to be subtle in their racism, promoting contemporary and ancient European heritage homeschooling materials.

And then? You come upon the mad blatherings. The proof that anyone with $10/mo can publish whatever they want to – with or without dictionary and/or spellcheck. The one that starts out saying “Unity! What is it? It is the ability to put aside our small differences for our common goals – race & nation.” and then goes on to say “Our sexuality has been distorted, women have become emasculated. They have been taught that they are no longer needed in the home as wives and mothers.” [sic.]

Note to website owner on the outside chance that they follow my link to this page:

Emasculate –v.t. 1. to castrate. 2. to deprive of strength or vigor; weaken; render effeminate. –adj. 3. emasculated; effeminate. [derived or descended from Latin emasculat(us) (ptp. of emasculare), equiv. to e- E- + mas male + -cul(us) adj. suffix + -atus -ate]. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary. 2001.

In other words… “…women have been (made less masculine)”. Got it.

I fear for the children educated by this person. And the first sentence, about unity/race/nation? Yeah, I threw up a lil in my mouth over THAT one. FORTUNATELY, that site doesn’t seem to do much more than spout above-referenced badly-written rhetoric. BUT!!! I’m not done yet. I do believe I’m going to be spending much of my Thanksgiving break researching and reading.

Hi, welcome to Overpriced Neighborhood Chain Store, can I help you?
Hi, I called about whether you had a DB9 gender changer.
*blank look* Is that a…..?
It’s a computer part. I need the male-to-male connector.
Male to male?
Yeah, see how it has 9 holes on each side? The only way to get two male endings to connect is to put a female between them. *blink blink*
…oooooookay. That’ll be $(more than the GNP of a third world country). Thank you for shopping!

Thank you, thank you! *curtsies* I’ll be here……FOREVER!!!!!

Currently playing: The Cure – World in my eyes.
Coming up:
Alanis Morrisette, Uninvited
Alison Krauss – Let me Touch you for a while
Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence
They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in your Soul
In Flames – Cloud Connected (club remix)
Rammstein – Stripped
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – I believe I can Fly

Yes, there’s more – but isn’t that enough??!!??

1. Receive your assignment – you have the entire semester to write it.
2. Breeze through the online journals at school. Realize there’s nothing related specifically to your topic.
3. Schedule a meeting with your instructor.
4. Tell the instructor you haven’t been able to find anything – there’s all kinds of stuff in the category, but you’ll probably end up doing a pilot study/poll for a good portion of it. Get told by the instructor to look harder, don’t give up. You really don’t have time for a pilot study.
5. Call gov’t agencies related to your topic.
6. Schedule another meeting with your instructor when the main message from the gov’t agencies is “WOW what a GREAT idea!!! Someone should do a study on that!!!!!” Get told by the instructor that a pilot study is possible, as long as you acknowledge that it’s a small sample, and may not necessarily be representative of the entire subject population. Leave the meeting with a black cloud rumbling in your psyche, muttering “NOT DOING A PILOT STUDY I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR IT!!!!!” and stomp your feet (on the inside).
7. Put the paper on the back burner as family and other classes take precedence.
8. Periodically bring up the lack of reference material in class. Roll your eyes as the instructor proceeds to Google it in class and bring up exactly what you said would be there – tons of stuff on the general topic, but NOTHING on your particular branch. Leave the class that afternoon saying “y’know what? This paper just MIGHT not get written!”
9. Percolate for another week or two.
10. Receive notice that for 20% (or maybe 10%) of your second exam grade, you’re expected to turn in a rough draft of your literature review. Leave class in a state of low-grade panic. It’s Thursday, the rough draft is due Tuesday.
11. Read the blogs on your link list. Enjoy some Laughing Yoga. Crank up the tunes and putz around myspace, sending odd random messages to complete strangers. Bubble wrap as a background??!!?? Go pop some bubblewrap in manic mode. Stop popping bubble wrap and change your search paramaters one.more.time.
12. Get inspired when your changed search paramaters bring up a subject you hadn’t considered, but that crossroads not one, but two social issues.
13. Message the guy with the bubblewrap background, hugging his neck and kissing his cheek, thanking him for his unintended but timely inspiration. (receiving no reply to that particular message)
14. Spend all day Friday paging through journals *yawn* and looking for subject-related books. Identify several sub-topics within the topic, all with related journal articles AND published books. Groan as you realize that you’ve just signed up to add more books to your “must read IMMEDIATELY” pile. (Love reading, btw. Reading under a deadline? Not so much.)
15. Spend Saturday in the computer lab at school, printing out said journals (NOT!!!! printing all 100 pages at home) and go to the bookstore for your books since you can’t find them in the library.

…To Be Continued

While I sincerely appreciate the links to “big tits”, the simple fact is – all I need to do is look down. What I’d like to see is my toes – without having to hold them out of the way.

Think you could arrange that for me? Hmmmmmm?

Love,

Me.

I didn’t write anything in 2003.
I didn’t write anything in 2004.

In 2005, I was hugely conflicted on the subject of filing for child support. The reasons for the conflict remain the same, but the anxiety turned out to be pointless. I wrote:

I want baby daddy to pay child support.
I don’t want baby daddy to pay child support.
I want him to KNOW the child is his (apparently, I’m a slut. Who knew?)
I don’t want to subject my child to the necessary blood draw for DNA analysis.
I want him to spend time with his child.
I don’t want him to spend time with his child.
I want the communication lines to open up, so we can get this mess straightened out.
I don’t want to talk to him.
I want to apologize for the wrongs I did.
I don’t want to apologize – I did nothing wrong. (did I?)

The anxiety was pointless because I didn’t take the glacial pace at which government agencies move into consideration. When I wrote it, I was thinking “They’ll haul him in, we’ll have our lil mouth swab, he’ll pick a fight just because he can, and It Will Suck Mightily.” Obviously, I had no clue as to the time component.

The reality is, I filled out the paperwork one year ago and have heard nothing from Official Sources. Because they are out of state, I’m not just dealing with one government, I’m dealing with three (NC and their respective states). And? Since I didn’t necessarily WANT to file in the first place, I’m making the choice to leave it as is. The respective gentlemen are aware that paperwork has been filed, if they choose to “step up” and cooperate, bully for them. I will continue to cooperate with Child Support Enforcement, but it will be from a “respond to their requests” point of view.

As for the rest of the angst, well… The money from child support would be nice. Since I’ve never had it to begin with, I don’t miss it or count on it to ever show up. Ditto that for time spent and good communication with us. I’m realistic enough to realize that it will probably never happen (since it hasn’t happened yet).

The only “wrong” I did was more of a “stupid” – not using redundant birth control.

but apparently, it does indeed need to be said.

This is MY blog. I post MY thoughts, beliefs, issues, or lack thereof.

When I put up a “not sure what to talk about” post like I did the other day, it is NOT a request for you to write a post for me. If you DO have an issue that you’d like to hear me write about, I will be quite happy to do that, HOWEVER…it should be in the form of questions you’d like me to answer. They should also be submitted through the “contact me” button up top.

A 1500 word comment with no paragraph breaks, no spellchecks, and a bogus email (commenter name Enlightened and email of “wakeup at AOL”??!!?? What an insult to my intelligence!) will NOT be published, and I don’t appreciate finding that kind of junk in my moderation queue. Open your own blog for your conspiracies – they’re obnoxiously easy to access.