So I tweeted about this yesterday, but it still has not changed today, and so I would like to seek answers from the wider circle of my LJ friends in case anyone can tell me WHY GOOGLE NEWS IS TRYING TO KILL ME OMFG.

Occasionally I do Google News searches on celebrities that I like, but who come up too often in random stories to which they are largely unrelated for me to set up Google News alerts for them. Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews would be two of these, obviously. So yesterday I searched on Carol Burnett and HERE IS WHAT GOOGLE NEWS DID:



It STARTED TO FILL IN THE AUTO-COMPLETE PHRASE "CAROL BURNETT DIED".

AND I HAD A HEART ATTACK. AND I CLICKED ON IT AND SAW A LIFETIME OF JULIE/CAROL SPECIALS FLASH BEFORE MY EYES IN THE HALF-SECOND IT TOOK THE NEWS PAGE TO LOAD. AND I FOUND. THAT.

CAROL BURNETT IS NOT DEAD.

MAY I REPEAT:

CAROL BURNETT IS NOT DEAD.

I. It. Because. What?!

WHY did Google News think I would want to search on "Carol Burnett died"? Why why why did it think that?! She's not even ill! As far as I know. Which means, as far as the Internet can tell me, and thus as far as anyone knows except maybe people who know her except that I hope they don't know that either because I hope she's not actually ill to begin with. But my point is, there is no reason for ANYBODY to be consistently Google-News searching on the phrase "Carol Burnett died." So she's old! So what! Tons and tons of people are old! When you search on "julie an", it tries to fill in "julie andrews" and "julie and julia", not "JULIE ANDREWS DIED".

So what is wrong with Google News? Is it conspiring against Carol Burnett? Is there some sort of twisted assassin-bot deep in the whoeverywhat computerythings that run Google that wants to see Carol Burnett dead, but is incapable of assassinating her because it is in fact buried deep in the whoeverywhat computerythings that run Google, so it has no outlet for its malice but to pop "Carol Burnett died" into the frequently-searched terms in an attempt to induce collateral heart-attack deaths in her fans? Or is it an anxiety-riddled Carol Burnett fan-bot that is likewise stranded deep inside the whoeverywhat computerythings, so it runs constant searches on the term "Carol Burnett died" to make sure she is still alive? Why is that form-completion there? WHY?!?!

Your consideration of this matter is appreciated.

I am doing a blogathon for my aunt Tricia.

It’s hard to know where to begin a post like this. I suppose I will jump into practicalities first and say that Tricia is extremely ill with Stage Four ovarian cancer. It’s terminal. No one knows how much time she has left, really; they’re taking a last-ditch shot at a new type of chemo that they hope will be palliative (though I’ve never heard that word in association with chemo before) and that may buy her some more time. But things are nearing an end.

I find it hard to imagine what Tricia’s family will do when she goes. Tricia, right now, lives with her two daughters and their two children. Both of her daughters, Laura and Brianne, are young single mothers who have been getting their feet under them in the last couple of years, and they’ve relied heavily on Tricia in doing so. And Laura and Brianne’s children are five and two, respectively. They’re both bright, loving kids who are a joy to be around, but they’ve got their share of troubles that make caring for them difficult at times. Aliyah, Laura’s daughter, has life-threatening allergies to a huge number of foods. Brianne's son Jayden was born legally blind, and although they’ve made great strides in his treatment and now he can see pretty well, his care is expensive.

Tricia has been their mainstay through this. She’s supported them emotionally and sometimes financially through the worst of times. And her daughters aren’t the only ones she helps. Her home has been open to troubled kids, kids who’ve run from bad home situations or who just have nowhere to go. And they love Tricia. I think we all know how charitably society in general tends to regard troubled teens with nowhere to go, but that's so far from the way Tricia thinks that I honestly don't believe it's ever even occurred to her to be judgmental. If someone needs help, she'll help them. It sounds trite to say she sees the good in everyone, but with Trish, it's not a Mary Sunshine thing, or a conscious effort. It's simple for her, seeing everyone in terms of their best qualities. It's reflexive. And it's very rare.

Through everything else she's done, she’s worked. She’s a nurse on an addiction/recovery unit, which is a hard, hard, stressful job. She does that job with a grace that few others can match, from what I’m told. The angriest, most recalcitrant of patients love Tricia, because she treats them with such kindness, humanity, and good humor. It’s a hard line to walk, retaining good grace while working in a job that demands so much of you emotionally, being kind without being a pushover. Trish is amazing at that job because she’s amazing outside of the job too. She’s always had that grace and kindness. She has a unique ability to make everyone who meets her feel at home. She’s empathetic and she’s generous and she is, incidentally, totally hilarious. You always leave Tricia’s presence laughing. She makes you feel good about yourself.

She is one of the most beautiful people I have ever known.

A huge number of people have rallied around her in her sickness, further testament to how well-loved she is. There have been major donation drives. They’ve been necessary for a number of reasons, one of the major ones being that her house had fallen into disrepair and we wanted to get it straightened out and accessible for her if she becomes too weak to navigate it as it was. The other big reason is that her health care is (surprise!) tied to her job, and she is no longer able to work. Her coworkers helped out by donating their sick time to her so that she could remain covered, but that’s running out. There is also a mortgage on her house that they want to pay off so that Laura and Brianne won’t be struggling to pay those bills when Tricia goes.

The donation drives were big. They raised enough to fix up the house. But now that that’s done, the money they raised is gone. The sick time will soon be out, and although she can go on Social Security, there is (surprise surprise!) red tape and wait time. The mortgage isn’t yet paid off either. But the big thing is the job and the healthcare.

If you have ever hated American healthcare and its lack of a public option, here’s a way you can help. I’m beyond hating it and into grim “what do we do now?” desperation.

What we do – well, what I do; everyone is doing different things – but what I do is a blogathon. Everyone else has their niches, their ways of raising money and helping out; my niche is writing. I am going to write for Tricia. I am going to write every hour on the hour for twenty hours and I am going to bring my A-game and make my writing as funny and passionate and thoughtful and entertaining and badass as possible, because this is what I can do for Tricia. But I need your help.

Here’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to write for 20 hours, as I said. I really, really wanted to do 24 hours, but λ and I eventually agreed jointly that, because of my bipolar and the risks involved in not sleeping for 24 hours – going manic, primarily -- I couldn’t risk my health that way. 20 is the most I can safely do, so I’m doing it. Here’s how I plan it:

• People who would like to help can donate a certain amount of money for every entry I write. There are absolutely no parameters on this. If you want to help but can only afford a very little, putting in a very little is 1,000% okay and no one will judge at all. Any gesture is so, so appreciated.
  
• There will also be bidding on the topic of each entry. I have 20 entries to write and, as of right now, no ideas about what any of them should be about. You can pick a topic for me, for a minimum starting bid of $5. I’ll write about absolutely anything you want, with the sole caveat that I will not violate anyone else’s privacy. My own life is an open book, and I’ll write anything about it and/or anything else you want to see me write about. I’d love it, obviously, if there were actual bidding and some of the topics went for more than $5, but I know that there may not be more than 20 people who want to pick a topic. Maybe there’ll be less than 20. Doesn’t matter. If you want to pick a topic and you can spare $5, the option’s there.
  
• And you can, of course, donate straight to the fund. More on that in a minute.

The mechanics of how this will work:

• All proceeds will go to the Tricia Reardon Benefit Fund. This fund has its own bank account, and when the blogathon is done, all proceeds can be PayPaled into this account. It’s the same account that the money was donated to in the various other donation drives that have occurred. Further information is available upon request – just let me know what you’d like to know.
  
• As I just said, the money will be collected after the blogathon, since obviously that’s when you’ll know how many hours I’ve done.
  
• I may put the PayPal link up before the ‘thon ends, or even before it begins – probably will, in fact, in case anyone wants to donate without participating. I’m waiting on the bank account information for the Fund. I’ll put that up when I have it.
  
• If there is any more information you need, let me know. You guys on my flist know me; you know I’m not running a scam. I don’t know if this will get linked out beyond here, but if it does, people who don’t know me might have questions. Ask them.

The most important stuff of all:

If you want to participate, look at the comments page. There are sections there.

First of all, there is a comment at the top, made by me, that is titled “Per-hour donations”. That’s where you list whatever you will donate for each hour POST that I post, in the “Reply to comment...” on that comment. I put down "per hour" because I lose hardcore; this is based on an hourly post model, but if I miss an hour, you don't have to pay for it. Sheesh. Anyway, in posting a per-POST donation, don’t reply to the entry itself; reply to the comment. It will keep things organized. And guys, please do not agree to donate something unless you will be able to afford that amount times 20. This is a serious thing for me and I’ll chase people down if I have to but man do I not want to have to. So yeah. Do the math out and be sure it’s something you can afford. If you *really* need to retract a bid because something crazy goes down with your finances, please do it before the blogathon takes place if at all possible. But barring emergencies, please sign up only for what you can afford, and please honor your bid.

Secondly, there are twenty more comments made by me which are labeled “First Hour”, “Second Hour”, etc. These are the comments to which you should reply in order to bid on a topic for that hour. Place your minimum-five-dollar starting bid and tell me to write about whatever you want.

As a note on the “first hour”, “second hour” thing, there are two possible time schedules for this blogathon: 4 am to midnight, or 7 am to 3 am. If I am doing the blogathon on a weekday it will be 4 am to midnight. If I’m doing it on a weekend it will be 7 am to 3 am. You guys will get to choose the date in the poll after this entry, since I don’t know whether people would in general prefer a weekday or a weekend day. All of which means, if you bid on “First Hour”, you are bidding EITHER on a weekday at 4 am OR a weekend at 7 am. I will also note those times in the subject lines so you don’t get confused. The hour is noted in full; i.e., the first hour of the blogathon means that I start writing (on a weekday) at 4 am and my deadline for finishing it is 5 am, so the entry might show up anytime between 4 and 5 am (well, probably on the 5 side). I start writing my final entry at 11 pm and end at 12 am, if it's a weekday. You get the picture.

Lastly, there’s a section for “General Comments”. This is where you ask questions or say whatever else you want to say that is not a per-hour donation commitment or a topic bid.


Poll #1486298
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

Which date and time would you prefer for the blogathon?

(Note: Friday the 27th is listed twice because it's the day after Thanksgiving and therefore a holiday for many people.)

Tricia is an amazing person, and she’s very, very sick. I’m not giving details of her specific condition right now because I don’t think anyone particularly needs the graphic details of end-stage cancer, and I don’t want to violate her privacy if she doesn’t want such details shared. But she is an extraordinary person by anyone’s measure, and she is dying, and the way in which she is dying is particularly heartbreaking. I’d do anything to ease her way, to say “this is what I can give you and your children, so don’t worry. We all love you and we’re all working to make it all right.” I do not agree with Dylan Thomas. I do want her to go gentle into that good night. I want her to go gently and in peace, knowing her children and grandchildren will never lack for love and support, and knowing that she will never lack for love and support either.

She will not die worrying about mortgages and healthcare bills and who will provide for her children and grandchildren. She will die in peace. We who love her are all determined to make this so. And this is what I can do.

Please, if you can, please help.


Tricia with her grandchildren, Aliyah and Jayden. From the blog which Tricia's family updates with news about her situation and condition.

Also, I seem to have missed National Coming Out Day.

So: Hi! I'm queer. If you missed it.

I suppose I could make this a slightly more interesting post and note that I use "queer" deliberately because I'm not really a lesbian, though I usually call myself one both as shorthand and because I identify with lesbian culture to a large extent. I could technically call myself bisexual, since I am occasionally attracted to men and might have acted on that at some point if my life had taken a different path somewhere along the line. But that term's never felt quite right to me: it implies a sex-'n'-gender binary that rings false to me, and it moves on to imply that there are men and women in this world and I'm attracted to both, end story. In point of fact not only are there a lot of transfolk and genderqueer folk in this world, but I am frequently quite attracted to them. In further point of fact, I tend to be mostly attracted to other folks who identify as queer, which means I am more likely to be attracted to a queer guy than I am to be attracted to a really hot heterosexual cisgender woman who has no interest in queer issues. This is why virtually all of my guy crushes have been gay guys, which would also be why I have no experience with guys. (If I'm a lesbian and I want to sleep with gay guys, why don't the gay guys want to sleep with me?)

Anyway. There was a meme that went around, a long time ago, in which you made an ID card that read "Hello, My Gender Is..." And then you picked all the options that applied to you from a *hugely* extensive list, to which you could also add items as you wished. (The added items were then incorporated into the larger list, which was why it was so long and so cool.) It incorporated a whole lot of elements into the idea of gender, which was basically the point. I liked that meme, and I'd be interested to see how much my answers have changed since the first time I took it. But I have no idea when I took it or where it is now, if it's even still online. Oh well.

But, yeah. I am queer! You knew that already. Above are listed some of the specific ways in which I am queer! You probably knew those already too.

Interestingly, though? I just realized that it was on Saturday that λ and I went to a family wedding on the side of the family where I hadn't bothered to come out to my extended family because they're incredibly conservative and I only see them like once a year, so it didn't seem worth it (especially because it would cause drama not just for me and λ, but for my grandparents and my mom, all of whom would be pretty upset by it). And it was just after midnight when they gathered my uncle's near family together for a group photo. And my extended-family-super-conservative-aunt-who-I-never-see was snapping pictures as well. And so she was there, camera and attention focused, when my uncles and aunt-in-law yelled that we couldn't take the picture until λ was in it. (Yay uncles and aunt-in-law.) And so λ came up a little bashfully and stood beside me, and we hooked our arms over each other's shoulders and smiled through the snapping camera flashes. And my super-conservative-aunt's face changed, just a little, and it was pretty clear that willed ignorance will only take you so far, and she'd just outstripped its limits.

I guess basically what I'm trying to say is that now that I think about it, I did some coming out on Sunday after all. And now, interestingly, there's no one I'm bothering to keep myself closeted from anymore, because if that aunt knows then so will that whole side of the family, and they were the only ones I'd been hiding from.

Well, shit, I can just go and join the [Extended Family] network on Facebook now. I was invited months ago and never accepted because editing my profile to hide my marital status from that network was a bit more active closeting than I was comfortable with. No need, anymore!

National Coming Out Day is cool!

ETA: Ooh, and lienne found it for me!

Hello My name is

Kylie

My gender is

admirer, ally, babe, bbw, bbw admirer, bi-romantic, biogirl, bisensual, bitch, bouncy, bubbly, caring, cat lover, chapstick lesbian, chick, chubby, cisgender, complex, confused, counselor, creative, cuddly, cute, dork, dreamer, dunno yet, dyke, etc., fangirl, fat, fat dyke, female, female-identified, feminist, friend, friendly, geek, genetic girl, girl, girl lover, glittery, huggy, human, indecisive, intelligent, interested, LGBTQQIA, left-brained, lesbian, lesbian-identified, lezbean, liberal, library dyke, lost, lover, loving, Mrs., Ms., me, misunderstood, myself, nerd, NLD, not sure of myself, not sure of others, obsessed, odd, open, passionate, peopleemotional, person, pro-family, pro-gay, pro-sex feminist, progressive, queer, queer dyke, queer femme, queersexual, quirky, romantic, same gender loving, same sex different gender oriented, sapiosexual, sapphist, sensitive, she-geek, snuggly, strange, sweet, teh gay, transfan, understanding, unsure, weird, whatever, wife, woman, XX

What's yours?

I actually had to add a Q to "LGBTQQIA" because I want both queer and questioning in the acronym. I was shocked that I wanted an option they didn't have. (But then, I do not have a clue what "LGBTQIOPPS" is. Anyone know?) They also had "autistic", which is like 1/4 accurate in describing me, and didn't have NLD, which is the fully accurate term. So I went back and edited that up too.

I could have chosen about twice as many words as I did and they would have been accurate denotative descriptors. I could also have cut the number of words I chose in half and it probably would have been equally accurate in denotation. Mostly I picked the ones I like and that I felt an affinity with when I looked at them. One bi-word even made its way in there. Look, I don't know, people. I don't make up these nonsense contradictions, I just live with them.

Anyway. I don't know how long ago I took the meme originally or how much it's changed. But I still like it.

So today is apparently National Poetry Day -- at least, it will be for twenty more minutes. I was sort of half-conscious of that all day and I sort of meant to post some of my favorite poems but I never got around to it. Then I realized that there were twenty more minutes in the day and, instead of just doing this a day late and posting a really thoughtful selection, got stubborn and posted the first few poems that came to mind. BUT I DID IT WITH SEVENTEEN MINUTES LEFT ON THE CLOCK, FOLKS

Anyway, I can tell you right off that this list demonstrates an obvious lack of sophistication and also a prejudice towards lesbians. That's okay by me. It's my list.

Fragment -- Sappho, tr. Anne Carson:

Eros shook my
mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees

This little fragment demonstrates two things to me: a.) how much power you can pack into just a couple of lines of poetry, and b.) how much a specific translation can make or break a poem. I think it's the Mary Barnard version of that that takes what Carson translates as "Eros shook my mind" and renders it as "Love shook my heart". Blecch.

* * *

( Elizabeth Bishop: 'One Art' )

* * *

( Amy Lowell: 'A Tree of Scarlet Berries' )

* * *

( Edna St. Vincent Millay: 'If I should learn, in some quite casual way' [Sonnet V from Renascence and Other Poems] )

* * *

( Alfred Lord Tennyson: 'Crossing the Bar' )

A final one I continue to love dearly is Federico Garcia Lorca's La balada del agua del mar, but all I've got is the Spanish and my own shitty translation, so I'll link to that but not repost it.

Happy National Poetry Day. You can consider the comments an open share space for your own favorite poems if you like.

Sometimes life is sad and depressing and you really don't feel at looking at the specific real-life things that are making you sad and depressed. So you search for random Julie Andrews videos on YouTube instead. And sometimes, if you are lucky, you find this:



Julie Andrews yodeling with the real-life Maria von Trapp.

Interestingly, I don't think I've ever told the story on LJ of how my grandmother met Maria von Trapp. It's a funny story because Gramma's sort of cagey on the details; she gets that way when you try to draw a story out of her, as opposed to what happens when she's just sort of letting her mind wander in and out of a conversation people are having, in which case she's liable to interrupt at any moment as a story strikes her and tell you about the time she tried to rescue a stranded snapping turtle for a pet when she was a small child and it bit her and all but sucked her finger off, or whatever.* My grandmother is a hell of a storyteller, but only on her terms, and for some reason, I have never been around when it has occurred to her to tell the story of her meeting Maria von Trapp. I heard it secondhand and begged her for the details, but she just smiled and shook her head and said "Oh, yes. I did meet her. What do you want to know?"

And since I do not know exactly what it is I want to know, because if I knew what I wanted to know then I'd already know it and I wouldn't have to ask, I have never been able to get good details. All I have been able to learn is the following:

1. My grandmother met Maria von Trapp when she (Gramma) had a friend visiting at the cottage, a priest who knew the von Trapps and was traveling with them; and
2. A relative of mine, who was a baby at the time and who shall remain nameless, peed on Maria von Trapp while being held in her lap.

Frankly I think my unnamed relative has the best role in this story, but I have never spoken to her about it. "So you peed on Maria von Trapp!" has never felt like a great conversational opener, I don't know why.

Next time I will ask Gramma if she asked Maria von Trapp to yodel with her. And if not: why?

Someday I will figure out the right questions to ask her, and I will get this whole story. I will just have to be as cagey as she. Hm.

*If you couldn't tell: this is perhaps the single thing I love most about my grandmother.

Hrm.

A.S. Byatt: "Basing a character on a real-life figure is an 'appropriation of [their] lives and privacy".

Of course, her saying this has nothing to do with the fact that her competitor for the Booker Prize, Hilary Mantel, wrote a historical novel about Thomas Cromwell.

Some thoughts, though:

( fictional musings [now with extra uncalled-for defensiveness regarding real-person fiction! )

Via ranka: here, have one of the best satire videos I've ever seen.

Have you ever wondered why people make such a fuss about gay marriage, but left-handed people are allowed to just go on their merry way, marrying and propagating and exposing children to their left-handed ways? Take heart, my friends. You are not alone:



I didn't think I was going to buy into this particular piece of satire, but by midway through I was rolling. Part of it is that this guy does an absolutely dead-on version of every blowhard right-wing commentator ever.

Incidentally, my grandmother, who is left-handed, grew up in Catholic schools in the era in which they tried to force left-handed kids to write with their right hands by whacking them across the knuckles with a ruler. She never did learn to write with her right hand. What she did learn to do was to write with her left hand, but upside-down. I guess if you don't look too closely that looks like you're writing with your right hand, because you're not dragging your hand across what you've already written. Anyway, to this day, she writes upside-down. She says it's embarrassing when she has to sign legal documents or anything because some bureaucrat will hand her the documents across a desk, and then she has to turn them upside-down to sign them. (I can personally vouch for the fact that watching someone write fluently upside down is pretty fascinating and more than a little bit funny, although I suppose it's only funny because Grandma herself laughs at it now.)

I doubt it would be very hard to find the parallel between this and the studies that have recently come out denouncing the practice of trying to convert gays into straights as useless and potentially damaging, but I have to go catch a bus now.

So if you want to get your child into private school in the Sims, and you invite the headmaster over for a dinner party, do not spend three days studying cuisine in order to learn to cook a top-notch meal, and then forget to order groceries, so that there is nothing in the house to eat.

And if you do do this, don't repeatedly try to send your Sim to make a meal, and get incredibly frustrated when he won't because why is he so stubborn, and only catch on to the fact that there are no groceries when the game itself takes pity on you and reminds you.

And if you then put in an emergency order for groceries, and start trying to make salmon with 45 minutes left in the dinner party, don't set the kitchen on fire.

And if you do, don't wonder wildly why the fire alarm is not working, and then realize that you accidentally installed two burglar alarms and no fire alarm.

And if you do do all of this, and you have a pregnant Sim in the house, don't miscalculate her delivery date and only realize it when she goes into labor in the middle of the fire.

And if you do miscalculate her delivery date and she goes into labor in the middle of the fire, don't have her give birth to twins, not that there was much I could do about that at that stage.

And if all of this happens and there are six minutes left in the party, and your mother-Sim has just disgorged twins onto the kitchen floor, and your father-Sim has just managed to extinguish the fire, leaving him exhausted and trailing clouds of green stink everywhere, and the headmaster is on his way out the door, don't make a last pathetic stab at rescuing the situation by pulling a bowl of mac and cheese out of your inventory and seeing if he will eat it. He won't.

If you do all of these things, the headmaster will determine that you are not the sort of family that should be associated with his fine institution (he'll say it just like that), and your child will not get into private school. Hard on the child, especially if he is a musical prodigy and if he has been studying quietly in his room, in formalwear, through the whole debacle.

Oh well. Twins!

ETA: AND A SPECIAL NOTE OF CAUTION FOR ALL SIM-FATHERS IN THE AUDIENCE: DON'T LEAVE THE SALMON IN THE OVEN UNTIL IT ROTS BLACK AND IS COVERED WITH FLIES, AND IF YOU DO, DON'T TRY TO EAT IT ONCE YOU TAKE IT OUT. YOU WILL GET SICK WITH FOOD POISONING AND MAYBE DIE. BECAUSE YOU ARE EATING ROTTEN FISH. AND FLIES.

JESUS CHRIST SIMS WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME.

I knew I should have given that dude some logic points somewhere along the line.

Poll #1436849
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

I am a miserable horror of a "writer" who should be summarily executed for crimes against the English language. What profession should I pursue immediately in the hopes of placating the Muses before they can beat me to death with a Norton Shakespeare?

oh help

Hey, everyone, it is my λ’s birthday and she is amazing! She is 28 today, and the prime factors of that (λ loves prime factors) are 7 and 2, which I’m pretty sure means that she is going to live for 72 more years, meaning she will top out at 100 years old, which is just a fantastic thing for the whole universe, so everyone applaud now. Also, wish a happy birthday to halfacricket! and I will pass the birthday wishes along to her. Or she can just check the comments.

We are currently accepting HTML, Rich Text (whatever the hell that is, but LJ gives me the option every day), e-mails, e-cards, lolcats, extraordinarily large sums of money, and birthday cakes thrown at Ann Coulter. Right now we have no good method for accepting extraordinarily large sums of money because our PayPal is ded, but if you want to send one I guarantee you we will help you find a way. Also, if you manage to throw a birthday cake at Ann Coulter, we will pay you the extraordinarily large sums of money. Just make sure the cake says “Happy Birthday λ” very clearly on the front in frosting, so that just before it hits her face she will see it and understand that it does not represent a well-intentioned, if oddly delivered, birthday wish for Ann herself.

...Happy birthday λ! Oh my wife is so great.

When I was a kid, I read an article in Highlights magazine that gave excellent instructions on how to pour out a bottle of water. It explained that if you upended the bottle and then swirled it around clockwise, the water would form a whirlpool at the mouth of the bottle, and it would all flow out much faster! Highlights helpfully suggested that you challenge your friends to a bottle-pouring-out contest, so you could make them feel like morons for not being able to empty a bottle as fast as you. Good times!

Not having any friends as a kid, I challenged my mom to a bottle-pouring-out contest instead. You can imagine the way my world tilted on its axis when I swirled my bottle around just the way Highlights had instructed, and the water DID go out faster -- but my mother still beat me! Because she *squeezed* her bottle! At first I accused her of cheating. Then, when I realized that if my mother was cheating in bottle-pouring-out contests there truly could be no rationality in the universe whatsoever, I said that it must have been a “mistake”. Physics made a mistake that day, my friends. Highlights magazine said so.

Cut to twenty years later. I am emptying out the remainder of a bottle of horrid Aquafina FlavorSplash (Raspberry! With Other Natural Flavors) in the bathroom sink here so I can refill it with normal water that has not been splashed with flavor.* Since the bottle itself has been tainted by pallid ghosts of raspberries long since passed, this requires me to refill and empty the bottle several times by way of exorcism.

And so the bottle goes swirl swirl swirl, and the whirlpool forms at the mouth, and out the water goes in a shining circular arc. And then I refill it, and swirl swirl swirl again, and watch in dumb 9 am stupefaction as the water pours out in another shining arc. And I’m three shining arcs in before I remember that physics didn’t actually break that day that my mother and I competed to empty a bottle the fastest. And that, therefore, I should be squeezing my bottle.

And I tried that for two seconds. And my hand resisted. It did not want to squeeze the bottle. Somewhere in the back of my head a little voice was wailing plaintively “yeah but Highlights SAID!”

So I gave in to the inevitable and went back to swirling the bottle again. I lost about thirty seconds of my life. But the little person with the little voice was happy.

I guess you never quite recover from a Highlights childhood.

____________________________________________________

*I got this affront to drinkable liquids everywhere when I was in a Dunkin Donuts and I wanted to get a Diet Coke, but they were a Pepsi place, so I asked for a Diet Pepsi, but they didn’t have Diet Pepsi, so I looked at what sodas they did have and it was Sierra Mist and three flavors of Crush, so then I went to get a water and they had five rows of Aquafina FlavorSplash Raspberry! water and no normal water.¹ WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO ME, DUNKIN DONUTS.

¹In answer to your inevitable question, I needed to be able to carry the water in my purse, so I couldn’t get it in a cup. Besides, Dunkin Donuts now charges for water in a cup. They put ice in it and call it a Blizzard Blast or something like that. I guess giving it a brand name justifies charging fifty cents for tap water.

I think I’m going to print off a bunch of copies of this article, or the relevant statistics therein, to hand out to the MASSPIRG folks and all those other path-blocking guilt-tripping people with the wide eyes and ingenuous smiles that I meet on the sidewalks like every damn day in spring and summer. I kind of don’t even want to admit how loony those people drive me. This is, of course, because I am ludicrously susceptible to guilt trips. If I can’t spare a moment for the environment, I must be a terrible person who bears the entire weight of global warming on her shoulders! So my thought process runs.

So yeah. I am happy to have documentation that justifies my seething, poorly suppressed loathing of those clipboard-bearing Stepford coeds. I seriously am going to make little statistics-laden flyers and, when confronted with a chirpy little voice asking me if I can spare just a minute to save AIDS-afflicted polar bears from illiteracy in the rainforests, I am going to smile brightly and say “Sorry! I can’t. Here’s why.” And then I am going to shove my own pamphlet at them, and watch as their lacquered happyfaces become interestingly distorted in their confusion. And I will be happy.

Thanks, Slate! About 75% of your other articles from today pissed me off, but this one is A+!

As everyone in the world has noted, Michael Jackson has died.

I am surprised that I am quite sad about this.

I've always been more sympathetic to Michael Jackson than many. Unlike most, I'm not convinced that he was sexually abusing children; I honestly think he may have just been so troubled that he cathected to children and slept with them (literally) in an attempt to regress to childhood himself. There's no way to know and I don't want to speculate on it any further. But I know that whatever else he was, he was an abused child and a deeply troubled adult. And the fact that he was an incredibly talented artist doesn't seem to have done much to mitigate what was, honestly, a pretty tragic life in many ways.

I am sorry that he was so troubled and I'm sorry that he's dead. I'm sorry for his family and for the friends who loved him. And -- I'm borrowing this caution from distaff_exile, but I mean it just as much as she did -- I will not be happy at all if I see people cracking wise at his expense. I know making fun of Michael Jackson, in death or in life, is like shooting fish in a barrel, and I don't care. Keep it off my journal.

On Michael Jackson is a book about both Michael Jackson and about what he's meant in our society. I found it insightful and enjoyable. Unfortunately the entire Internet has descended on Amazon to buy up all the books about Michael Jackson it can get its hands on, and as a result there are only two copies of that one left in stock. I am assuming they will be doing a very fast new printing. (I could probably sell my copy pretty high right now, actually, if I cared to.) I am not sure how Margo Jefferson feels about Michael Jackson's death, but I am pretty sure it is giving her a substantial boost in income.

It's a strange situation all around.

Question for the day:

What, precisely, is in a Butterfinger?

I know about butterscotch and I know about toffee. I know about malt and I know about peanut brittle. I know about rice crisps and I know about caramel and I know about nougat and I know about coconut and I know about nuts and I know about just about every damn thing you can put in a candy bar, but I do not know about the stuff that is in Butterfingers.

What is that stuff? And why do I want to eat it RIGHT NOW?

The universe, it is full of questions!

Oh FFS, can we not just get RID of this woman?!

[Note: All that happened here was that Jenny McCarthy got a talk show and a multimedia deal with Oprah. She hasn’t said or done anything new beyond that. But I am at maximum Jenny McCarthy exposure, and I’ve been storing up this rant for a long time. So.]

I’ll tell you, I have just reached my limit with Jenny McCarthy. I’ve had it with her pretensions to scientific expertise when she apparently gets all her information out of the advertisements in yoga magazines, I’m tired of seeing her face on every third magazine in the grocery store, and I am especially tired -- dudes, I am RIGHTEOUSLY tired* -- of her bullshit talk about “curing autism”. I’ve had it. She shrills and skirls on and on about vaccines and autism until a definitive study is published FOR THE LIKE 25TH TIME indicating that vaccines are NOT linked to autism, and even now I’m not sure that she’s shut up about that. And then she persists in going on about “curing” and “healing” autism. Not parenting children with autism. Not helping kids with autism exist more easily in the neurotypical world. CURING them. She wants to fix the brains of all kids with autism. Because, you see, there is something wrong with them, the same way that there is something right with the brains of all neurotypical people, and so all of them need to be made neurotypical as quickly as possible. (Until they die of smallpox. But what are the odds of that? It’s not like vaccines have ever done anyone any good anyway, amirite?)

Look. I have a nonverbal learning disability, which is sort of right on the brink of being on the so-called “autistic spectrum”. It shares many qualities with Asperger Syndrome, and it’s linked with my sensory-integration disorder, which in turn shares qualities with autism. For these reasons, neurodiversity acceptance is an important issue to me. And I do know that I’m not autistic per se, and that as such, I maybe shouldn’t be the one to talk here. I know that whatever difficulties my NLD and SID have presented me with (and they have been troublesome), it’s nothing compared to the difficulties of handling the world as a severely autistic individual, or as the parent of a severely autistic individual. I know it’s easy for me to go all rah-rah neurodiversity when I’ve always been able to talk and interact and -- usually -- pass for neurotypical when I need to.

But I’m talking despite all of that, and here’s why. I’m talking because I do not believe that it is okay in any sense to be working towards “normalizing” the brains of people who think in a different way from the majority of people. I don’t even know where that begins and ends. Okay, autism is challenging. But many of the autistic spectrum people I’ve talked to (I’ve been to some of the conferences and met lots of people on the spectrum, although the majority of them probably were Aspies and didn’t have one of the more severe forms) say they wouldn’t trade in for a neurotypical brain under any circumstances. We like observing society from a little way off. We like having a different perspective. We like the quasi-savant qualities that many of us have, and we enjoy the driven, passionate dedications we have to certain things (computers or cars or stamp collecting or anything else you can name), even if they’re almost exclusive of all else and thus look really “weird” to the outer world. The external world can be really scary and it might make us throw temper tantrums or hide in small places, but those places feel safe, and it’s nice to feel safe. It isn’t nice to not feel safe -- not at all. But dealing with that lack of safety is part of our world, and most of us develop strategies for dealing with it. And it’s stuff like clicking or rocking or flapping or hiding, and so of course it doesn’t look “normal”. But if it works for us and it’s not hurting anybody, what in the hell gives people the idea that they have the right to judge?

And I say “we” because even though I’m not severely autistic I’ve read the words of those who are, describing their own experiences, and my God do I relate. I’m not autistic, not exactly. But the reason I know I am on that spectrum is because I understand everything I read about it so perfectly and so intuitively.

I’ve never read of, nor encountered, an autistic person who wanted to be “cured”. People who want help in dealing with the more difficult aspects of the disorder, sure. I don’t think anyone wants to scream when they’re touched or to be unable to stand the sound of people’s voices or to become completely overwhelmed in crowds or to be unable to communicate with those who love them. And for those whose temper tantrums lead them to lash out violently and potentially cause harm to others (though that's not as common as you may believe, either) -- of course that needs to be stopped as quickly as possible. Certainly there are aspects to autism that are difficult or painful for both the autistic person him/herself and/or for those around them. And any help that can be offered in making those difficult parts less difficult is great.

But no more talk about a fucking “cure”, okay? No more of this superior neurotypical privileged bullshit. Lose the conformity fixation, for God's sake. You’ll note that McCarthy’s books’ titles are “Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism” and “Mother Warriors: A Nation of Mothers Healing Autism Against All Odds”. Notice anything about those titles? I do. They both feature the words “mother”, “healing”, and “autism” -- and neither of them make a single reference to “Evan” (her son), “listening”, or “autistics”. Those books aren’t about people with autism, and they’re certainly not about listening to or trying to understand autistic people’s lived experiences. They’re about Jenny McCarthy being a mom who wants her kid to not have autism, and who decided to make a crusade of it along the way.

Anyway. Helping is cool. Understanding is cooler. “Curing” is fucking insulting.

There, I’m done.

*Can you even be righteously tired? Doesn’t matter. I so am.

I didn't realize how much of a grudge I held against the 1-800-SUICIDE hotline until this "1,000 RTs for $1,000!" thing started on Twitter. I mean, it makes sense, right? Suicide prevention's an important issue, I'll be the first to tell you that. But 1-800-SUICIDE... well, I first got a little squidgy about them several years back (2005ish? I 'unno) when they went from being privately funded to being funded and essentially run by the Bush administration -- as I understand it, a government agency was now staffing and training the hotline counselors. I didn't, and don't, really know how to process that -- I have no idea if the dangers were exaggerated or what. I know they were logging/keeping records of the people who called, which is of course a concern as far as confidentiality goes (there had also been concern that frequent callers would find it more difficult to get life insurance, but I don't know how likely that is, and as far as I know all it ever was was speculation.)

What I do know firsthand is that one night I myself called them in crisis. I should note that ever since one very bad night in college when I poured a bottle of pills into my hand and then knew I couldn't take them, I've known suicide isn't an option for me. It just isn't. There's something in me that wants to fight and wants to live -- probably because all my demons are in my head, and there are so many people in my life who love me and will help me fight. I have had tremendous luck in being born into the family I was. Anyway, the point is, I can't commit suicide. I know this. I flirted with the idea for years until I hit that point where it was "you either take these pills or you flush them, and decision time is right now." And I flushed them. And whenever I start to feel that suicide would be a good idea, I think back to that moment, and I know it isn't for me.

But the fact that suicide isn't for me doesn't always make things feel *better*. Actually, a lot of times, it makes it feel worse in that particular moment. Because that way, I have no out. A friend of mine recently referred to suicide as an "emergency exit"; it's a scary idea and I wish it didn't feel that way to anyone and I don't want anyone in this world to ever take it. But I know that feeling. And I know that while I used to feel like I had an emergency exit, I know now that it isn't true. And if I'm trapped in a room and the walls are closing in and they get tighter and tighter until they're pressing in on me on all sides and my chest can barely expand and I'm gasping and I can't see how I could push them away -- I can't even trick myself into believing there's a way out. All I know is I have to get through to tomorrow, and there are times when I have absolutely no idea -- I mean, no idea at all how I'm going to do that. My brain stops working right. ( maybe triggery ) I start thinking I don't even know what. None of it makes any sense. I'm alone in my head and it's this alien landscape and I can't get out of it and it's just damn scary.

So one night I called 1-800-SUICIDE because I didn't know where else to call. My thoughts, such as they were, were that, okay, I wasn't actively suicidal, but everything was *so* wrong in my head and I knew I was a danger to myself even if I wasn't going to actually kill myself. A self-injuring mindset is a bad place to be in. A mindset that's almost, but not quite, mildly psychotic is a bad place to be in. I knew just enough to know that, knew just enough to know that a bunch of tiny cuts or a bloody bald head weren't the answers. So I called the suicide hotline. I may not have conveyed it properly in this entry, but the state I was in was my bipolar version of severe depression -- for me it bottoms out in, well, this kind of shit. And I desperately wanted someone I could talk to, someone who would make me feel less alone, someone who would reassure me that it would be okay, that this was all in my head, who would talk me through what sorts of things might make me feel better. I thought if they had tactics to talk someone down from suicide those same tactics might work to get me off the brink of whatever this was. And I thought that even if that wasn't an option, there would at least be a voice on the other end of the line, someone to care about what was happening to me.

And so I called. And this is the conversation that we had.

KYLIE: [troubled, withdrawn, and not articulating very well] Hi, I... was hoping you could help me... I -- I'm feeling depressed, and I thought... is this, like, somewhere I can call to talk to somebody?
HOTLINE LADY: [with a trace of impatience] Are you feeling suicidal?
KYLIE: I... no, I don't think -- I mean, not exactly. I'm bipolar and it's... a bad night and I... no, I'm not suicidal, because I know I couldn't do that, but I feel like... I mean, it's a bad night.
HOTLINE LADY: This is a suicide hotline.
KYLIE: So... I can't talk to someone there? This isn't somewhere I can call?
HOTLINE LADY: [more impatiently than before] It's a suicide hotline. You're not suicidal?
KYLIE: ...no. I guess.
HOTLINE LADY: Then I can't help you.
KYLIE: Is there... I mean, like, somewhere else where I could call? Where they could help me?
HOTLINE LADY: Not that I know of.
KYLIE: ...okay. So I guess I should go?
HOTLINE LADY: All right.
KYLIE: Um... thanks...
HOTLINE LADY: You're welcome. ::click::

And I do know it's a suicide hotline. And I know the techniques they are trained in are probably meant to bring people off the brink of suicide.

But I also know this. Not everyone who is suicidal is able to articulate those words. Just calling a hotline called 1-800-SUICIDE ought to be a tip-off that the caller is not doing well and is probably latently, if not overtly, suicidal. (Years after I made my "to swallow or to flush" decision, a psych evaluation showed that I had "significant latent suicidal ideation" and that I needed to be carefully monitored to make sure that didn't become overt.) Hotline staffers should be trained to deal with the fact that some of their callers *will* be in a "I mean, I could never actually do it, but..." state, and they should be trained to ask what's after the but, what's underneath the ellipsis. And even if they can't help the person who's calling -- they may not be trained to deal with psychotic states, for example, although I believe that they should be -- they need to show some kindness. Not impatience. Not "I can't help you" with an undernote of "why did you call 1-800-SUICIDE if you're not suicidal?" and an even stronger undernote of "get off the phone." I heard *no* kindness in that woman's voice at all, and I needed to hear a kind voice so badly that I would have taken anything I could get. There was nothing *to* get. Just impatience, and a distinct impression that if I didn't know that 1-800-SUICIDE was strictly for suicidal people, I was kind of dumb.

Maybe 1-800-SUICIDE is a good hotline for bringing overtly suicidal people -- the people who can say "I am seriously considering slitting my wrists/swallowing these pills/using this gun/whatever" -- off the brink. And that's a good thing. That's a great thing. But what is so scary is feeling like if you don't have those pills held up to your mouth, there's no net to catch you if you fall. There's no one you can call at 3 in the morning who will speak to you kindly and help you through this.* And it's especially awful when you call the only hotline you know of and they tell you you're not worth their talking to. That what you're going through doesn't matter because it doesn't involve an immediate threat to your life.

Whenever you hear statistics about depression and such, what you hear most is "Depression kills x number of people each year." Through suicide. And most of the efforts to work with depression are aimed at suicide prevention. Which is huge. Crucial. Immediate. Of paramount importance. I could give more adjectives, but you get the point.

But what those stats ignore are the people living in misery every single day. We fall off the radar. Hospitalization programs are designed for people who are suicidal; suicidality is the magic key that unlocks the door of the ward.** A good therapist or prescriber will worry about severe depression even if there's no suicidal ideation, but a bad one -- and I can vouch for this personally -- will not devote a whole lot of energy to ameliorating that. I had a therapist once -- saw him for a year, actually, because I didn't know any better options were available to me -- who literally did not care if I was barely able to get out of bed, so long as I wasn't going to kill myself and I wasn't going to go manic.

I'm not severely depressed today. But what that woman on 1-800-SUICIDE taught me was that if I was ever going to get out of those super-depressed states, I was going to have to fight my own goddamn way out, hanging to the cliff face by my fingernails and listening to them rip one by one and praying I'd find some sort of a foothold before the last bloody nail pulled off. When I posted the other day about how when my brain starts to go quasi-psychotic, I take a quarter dose of antipsychotic and then watch the Golden Girls? No one ever taught me that. No one ever even taught me what dosage of meds would be appropriate in that situation. No one ever taught me strategies to get out of that scary place. I had to go through trial and error a million times before I learned the sort of music that will bring me out of a specific headspace, the difference between that and the headspace in which coloring is the most helpful thing for me, and the difference between both of those states and the state in which Seroquel and the Golden Girls are best. I did it all on my fucking own. And I'm proud of that, and I resent that, too. For about four or five years, starting a year or two after my diagnosis, I had a good therapist who helped me through the worst of things, and she's the reason I was able to carry on for myself after a point. But things with her collapsed, as things are wont to do. And now this fight seems to be mine and mine alone.

And that's fine. You know, it's fine. Whatever. I'll handle it. I do handle it. I'll keep handling it.

But in retrospect, I am so, so angry at that woman from 1-800-SUICIDE who told me that since I wasn't suicidal, my problems didn't matter, and she couldn't help me. I am so, so angry that she wouldn't show me some kindness. I am so, so angry that she didn't care.

Maybe she was just one bad hotline staffer. Maybe the rest are better. Maybe the issues surrounding the Bush administration's takeover of the hotline and the confidentiality issues and all that don't amount to much.

But goddammit, that was a bad night, and it got worse after I called that woman. And I didn't know how much that bitterness was still a part of me -- how little I'd forgiven, much less forgotten -- until I saw so many RTs on Twitter asking for funding for that hotline. If I'd never called them, I'd have RTed it myself. Actually, I did RT it myself when I first saw it, because promoting suicide awareness when I can is such a reflexive thing for me, before I stopped to think for a second. I deleted the RT after thinking about it. And now I can't stop thinking about it.

I just wish that things could be different. I wish the most well-known mental health hotline in the country weren't one that only helps actively suicidal people. I wish there were a 24-hour mental health hotline available to everyone who feels they can't survive the night. Because there isn't. I've looked. When last I checked, anyway, the only general-mental-health hotline available was open 9-5. Who in the hell needs that sort of hotline 9-5? Night is the bad time. Night is statistically the most likely time for decompensation. During the day we can call our therapists and expect a call back at ten of the hour. During the day there's a world out there that is still alive and waking and available to help us. During the night, we are alone.

And there's no one for us to call. Hence, The Golden Girls.

::sigh:: I don't even know where exactly this rant is coming from. I've been writing so much about mental illness lately, after a period of writing so little about it for so long. I don't know why I'm suddenly feeling compelled to share. To break my own self-imposed silence.

I don't have a good way to end this post.


*Calling family and/or friends is completely different and not what I, at least, wanted in that moment. They're too emotionally invested. They can't be objective and caring at the same time.
**Not that a psych ward is necessarily a great time, but around-the-clock care and constant monitoring of medication/adjustment of meds as appropriate is a very important resource.

"I'm dead! I'm dead!"

The words came from a grizzled old man in a tan baseball cap, hollering at people through a few crooked yellow teeth. It was a beautiful day out, and I'd gone for a walk on the Commons on my lunch break. The grass was full of people lounging with sunglasses on and backpacks under their heads, or with kids and toys spread around them on blankets; the fountains were on in the Frog Pond, and children leapt through the water.

Until I came across the man I had been thinking how nice it was to be out on a day like this, the weather making everyone a little happier, the people around me getting the same lift I was from the sun and the breeze and the pretty surroundings. I heard the man yelling and my thoughts froze up a little bit, but my feet kept walking. Near me a child asked her mother, "Why is that man yelling?" The mother said comfortingly, "It's all right. He's just talking out loud."

"I'm dead! I'm dead!"

I was maybe twenty feet past him when I stopped, my back to him. The words he was shouting pulled me into a place I didn't want to be in, a dark place with rough walls where the air was dirty and got clogged in your lungs. I stopped because I'd been there before. Oh, I've never been dead. But I know what it is to feel that way. I knew he was shouting at the world that so much of what lived inside him had died that it didn't matter anymore that his body hadn't caught up.

I'm bipolar -- bipolar I, with psychotic features. I don't know if all my readers know that. If you don't you should know it now. I'm crazy, and so was the guy in the park. So I stopped, and looked the other way, and waited to see what I was going to do.

I must have stood there for five minutes, with his shouts of "I'm dead!" ringing out behind me every ten seconds or so. I had been planning on doubling around the park and stopping at McDonald's for a package of apple slices to go with my lunch. I felt in my pocket; one bill. Didn't matter what it was. I couldn't give it to him and still get my apples. And besides, giving him money wouldn't help. He needed a soup kitchen, a place to stay, a hospital. Something.

I looked around. None of those things were around.

I thought about it. If I gave him the money and gave him directions for how to get to a hospital on the T, would he go? Check into the psych ward through the ER? Not likely.

What if I walked him with me to the McDonald's, bought him something to eat? But I couldn't stay with him -- I had to get back to work, and I'd seen too recently what happens to crazy people in reputable establishments.

Part of me -- a big part of me -- wanted to go back and talk to him. And another part of me -- another big part of me -- wanted to walk away. λ's and my financial situation is tight right now; we have to be watching every dollar we spend, and the money in my pocket wasn't mine alone to give. And the guy was scary. He was crazy. He was sitting on a bench shouting at people and he could lash out if I approached him. As I thought about it, I heard him yell the word "Faggot!" I thought it was "I'm a faggot!", actually, but I couldn't be sure. Another time I thought I might have heard "Cunt!", but again, I couldn't be sure. The only words that were coming out clear were the ones he kept repeating: "I'm dead!"

And somehow I turned around and started walking back. Scared, feeling stupid, but feeling impelled. Something about the words touched me in a way I couldn't even fully explain, and still can't. He was dead. He wanted the world to know he was dead. He was breathing, and he was dead. I needed him to come out of that space in his head. I needed him to know he wasn't dead. I needed him to be better.

So I walked up to him. Very cautiously. I said, "Hey, guy, what's going on?"

His face took on a look of alarm. "Hey, no, I'm not --" he said, garbling the words. He thought I was somebody in authority, come to tell him to move along. So much for my being afraid of him -- he was afraid of me, and, I realized, probably with better reason than I had.

"No, it's okay, it's okay," I said, as reassuringly as I could. "I just wanted to ask what's going on."

He stopped shouting immediately. Tilted his head toward me. His whole expression changed. In one second he'd gone from angry and raving to polite and open, putting social manners on as you might adjust your jacket and straighten your tie.

"I'm Joe Haskins,"* he said to me. His speech was twisted and slurred, but there was no smell of alcohol off him, no bottles around him. Whatever was wrong with his speech was part of what was wrong with him. I didn't, and don't, think he was drunk.

"Hi," I said.

"I need you to know something," he told me.

"What's that?" I asked.

He pondered for a long moment. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said.

"Hi," I said again. Then, "It seems like you're having a bad day."

"You know what, little lady?" he said.

"What's that?"

"I need to tell you something. I really need you to know this."

"Okay."

"You are..." He paused, thinking about it. "You're my brother. My sister," he added. Still caught on "brother," I didn't respond. "And let me tell you something else. I'd kill for you."

Um, okay. "No, it's okay. I'm glad to meet you." I started to say, "I don't want you to kill anybody for me," but stopped myself. He was not going to kill anybody for me; that wasn't the situation, it had nothing to do with what was going on. I didn't feel like letting him know that my first impulse had been "oh, God, please don't act homicidal."

"I'd..." He lost track of his thoughts again. "I'm Joe Haskins. And you... let me tell you, little sister..."

"What's that?"

I couldn't understand his reply.

"Hey," I said, "I'd like you to feel better today. Can --"

He was already shaking his head vehemently. "No, no, no," he said, angry and sad. "No, no."

"No? That's not going to happen, huh?"

"No, no, no."

"I'll pray for you," I said, not that sure why, except that a lot of the homeless people I see seem to find solace in religious paraphernalia.

He shook his head again, as firmly as before. "No."

I went back to my original plan. "Is there someplace you can go?" I asked. "Someplace you can stay?"

He smiled at me, big. "I own this spot."

"Okay." I had no idea how the lives of the homeless worked, especially not in Boston Common, where their presence seems to be tolerated as a simple fact, as just part of the way things are in the city. I was gathering myself up to ask if he'd ever been to a hospital, and, if so, if he wanted to go, when another guy walked up and gave Joe a half-smoked cigarette. "Hey, Joe, how's it going?" he said.

I turned to the guy. "You know him?" I said.

"I'm his brother," the other guy told me.

"Oh, good," I said, immensely relieved. "Look, is he okay? Is he --"

"Well, not like that, but you know. We're brothers out here."

"Oh," I said, getting it. "You two look out for one another?"

He shrugged. "We do what we can, you know?" He reached out to shake my hand. "Sam."

"Hi, Sam." We shook, and he wandered off for a bit.

"Sister," Joe said suddenly, "I love you."

I smiled, but didn't say it back. How was I supposed to say it back? I liked him, cared about him, but I didn't love him. I have a lot of love in my life, a lot of people who love me and whom I love. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that I don't need the love of strangers -- I don't need them to love me, and I don't need to love them, either. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that Joe needs both.

"I'm really glad I met you, and I hope I see you around again," I said to him. I reached into my pocket for the money. He might have seen me do it, I don't know.

"Can I ask you a question?" he said. I said, "Sure," and he repeated it a few times -- "I gotta ask you a question. Can I ask you something? I just gotta ask. Honestly." Whatever it was, it wasn't too easy for him to say. "Sure," I told him, several more times.

"Do you have any money?"

Funny, since I'd been aiming to give him money all along. He hadn't been begging for it, I should add; he didn't have a cup out, wasn't asking for spare change. I pulled the bill out of my pocket, saw that it was a five rather than the ten I'd thought it was. I was relieved. We can afford five bucks more easily than ten. I pressed it into his palm.

"Little sister... I gotta tell you..." He seemed overwhelmed. The conversation went in some loops, more "I love yous," more affirmations of brotherhood. He stretched out two fingers -- I wasn't sure if it was a peace sign or an attempt to reach out to me. I pressed two fingers to his, like I was in E.T. or something.

He leaned in close. "Do you want it back?"

"No, no," I told him. "I want you to have it."

And he bent his head and started crying. Brittle, choking, broken sobs. The ashes from the cigarette Sam had given him scattered down his shirt front. He grabbed my hand and held it compulsively, shaking, sobbing, the brim of his cap covering his face. He glanced up once. "I'm dying," he told me, and I didn't know whether he meant that he was truly terminally ill -- he didn't look it, but how the hell do I know? -- or just that he could not see any way that a life like the one he was living could go on for much longer. "I'm sorry," I told him, watching my heart crack a bit from a long way off.

"I've got to go," I told him eventually, watching his hand over mine, the gnarled knuckles and yellow nails. "I have a job and I have to get back there or they won't be happy. I hope I'll see you again, okay?"

He looked up, his eyes dry. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said. "What's your name?"

I told him my first name.

"Kylie," he said. "Thank you."

I have not made any of this conversation up. It sounds saccharine, scripted, like an anecdote out of Chicken Soup for the Soul. But it's not. Sometimes I exaggerate stories for effect, mostly when I'm telling a funny story, but not now. I've rendered this as exactly as I can remember it because I need to convey that this was a man who was sane once, who once knew how to interact normally, who knew to say "Thank you" and how to introduce himself politely to a stranger and how to refuse offers of money if the giver can't afford them. If you'd been there you could have seen it in his face, like the flip of a switch when I started speaking to him. If he'd had all his teeth and had been able to speak straight, in that moment, you wouldn't have thought him any different from you and me.

He's certainly not that different from me. A tip of the wheel of fate -- born into a different family, not enough money, lousy luck in finding qualified mental health professionals (and I should add, an ability to find qualified mental health professionals who can save a life like mine from a fate like Joe's is not a foregone conclusion for even a middle-class girl) -- and I could have been exactly like Joe. That's what I see whenever I see a mentally ill homeless person on the street. I see myself hunched over a grocery cart, with wild hair and tattered clothes, loaded down with plastic bags and a battered sleeping roll.

Joe was beginning to let go of me when another guy showed up. "Hey, Joe," he said. He looked at me questioningly.

"You two know each other?"

"Know each other? I'm his father," the new guy said, settling down. "Jack Haskins the Fourth. Nice to meet you." I waved. "No, it's true, I really am," he said. I nodded. Meanwhile, another guy came up from the left. "Hey, guys." He reached out to shake my hand. "Paul Dowd. I'm his cousin."

"Okay. You guys will all look out for each other, right?" I addressed Paul, who seemed as sane and pulled-together as anyone else you'd happen to meet. "He'll be all right? Joe?"

Paul nodded. "Oh sure. Sometimes he just gets liquored up and he gets to feeling sorry for himself. He'll be fine."

"Thanks," I said. I addressed myself to Joe. "Bye now. Maybe I'll see you around again."

I don't remember what his reply was. I was already walking back to my job.

Walking back I thought about a lot of things. I knew, after the conversation, that if I'd tried to save Joe by bringing him to a hospital or a shelter or a soup kitchen or anywhere else, it wouldn't have mattered. He had his bench, his bench that he owned as far as he or anyone else was concerned. He had his family. I took a great deal of comfort from the family he had around him, his brother and his father and his cousin. As I'd left there had been a woman in a wheelchair coming over to join the group, a woman with an oxygen tube running through her nose. She had a family too. I had never known that. I had always thought homeless people lived entirely alone, cut off from the rest of the world. Now I know that at least in Boston Common, they have their own world. My assumption that the world of non-indigent, bustling, "normal" nine-to-fivers was the only world had turned out to be incorrect. Homeless people may be exiled from "polite" society, but some of them, at least, build their own societies to support their own lives.

And I thought about how I had always been scared of giving too much of myself to homeless people -- giving money whenever I saw them, even talking to them and putting that emotional investment into it -- because I thought they would take and take and take until I didn't know how to stop myself from bleeding dry. I thought of how little Joe had needed. His manner had changed the moment I'd spoken a kind word to him. It was very clear that no one had spoken kindly to him for a very long time. And maybe his short-term memory is shot and that's why he can't remember the last time someone was kind, but I don't think so. I think people are scared and uncomfortable and they don't think they can help and so they walk on by. And he kept shouting, kept shouting, "I'm dead".

And I don't know how long he'll remember me or whether he'll remember me at all, but I don't care. And I know he'll almost certainly use that five bucks I gave him for alcohol and I don't care about that either. The five bucks was not about getting him to a better place. Unless a miracle happens, he will never be in a better place than he is in now. He's settled, with a bench he calls his own and an adopted family around him, and change is too hard and too scary to even attempt when you have any kind of security at all. Five bucks was never going to change anything material, but when I gave it to him what it meant was that I cared, and my God but did he need that.

I am not telling this story to be boastful. I walk past dozens of homeless people a day and do nothing. I will come out and say something I didn't think I was going to confess publicly, that if he had been a black guy instead of a white guy I would not have felt comfortable approaching him, and I would have done nothing. I am not laying claim to sainthood. The only reason I did what I did was because I empathized with him because I am myself mentally ill.

But I needed to write the story for LJ, because I needed to tell people that there is a person in there and that person is as familiar as you or I. Not just "as human as you or I" -- I mean, duh. But as familiar. At some point when he was younger he had no idea he was going to end up where he is now, and neither did anyone around him. If things had been a little different he would have a life like yours or mine. And all of that was right under the surface. I mean, right under the surface.

There are plenty of mentally ill people who are violent and scary, and approaching them wouldn't have this effect -- I doubt most of them would lash out at someone who approached them kindly, or they'd be in jail already (prisons are full of untreated mentally ill people, and the court systems are not terribly lenient when it comes to homeless indigents who attack everyday upstanding citizens), but some would no doubt continue to yell aggressively. I'm not sure how it was that I evaluated Joe as someone who wouldn't do that. It wasn't just a guess and it was more than a hunch, but I couldn't explain it, so I can't pass on any advice, either. Other people will have to judge for themselves whether it feels safe to show kindness to people like Joe when they encounter them.

But I needed to have it known. Joe really, really, really needed someone to be kind to him, and it was so easy to show him that. Really. All the time I spent agonizing and pondering, I figured it would be this big damn deal to try and talk to this guy without getting hit or robbed or pleaded with endlessly, and the only thing he wanted was for someone to act like he was not a piece of shit they needed to scrape off their shoe.

I just needed to say it. I hope somebody who reads this will be in a situation at some point where they feel comfortable reaching out to someone who needs it.

I don't think I'll pray for Joe, because he told me not to. I'll keep thinking of him though. Maybe in some way it's the same thing.

*Not his real name.

I never posted about AmazonFail over on Twitter. λ and I still have no computer at our home -- hers has been in the repair shop for two weeks and will be there for another one; it will be several weeks more before we can afford a second home computer for my writing -- and as a result my ability to access the Internet has been slipshod. So I was offline for a day and a half, and when I came back to Twitter, everything was flooded with the tag #amazonfail. And honestly? I spent most of my time rolling my eyes about it. There is a certain kind of Internet outrage for which I have little tolerance. It happened with Strikethrough '08 and it happened with the Open-Source Boob Project and it's happened in a whole bunch of other circumstances that I don't remember. In each case people have gotten furious and posted to blogs and/or Twitter, and then their readers have gotten furious and posted to more blogs and/or Twitter, and then suddenly the whole Internet has exploded, and no one talks about anything else for weeks, and I wind up wanting to shoot my monitor with a 12-gauge. Most of the time there is a real, valid reason for the original objections. And by the time it's over, the outrage has snowballed on itself until the original objections are totally unrecognizable. And everyone's howling for blood and feeding off one another and journals are deleted and Godwin is invoked and just the idea of going on the Internet while it is going on makes me want to take a nap. AmazonFail appeared to be one of those things. I was not interested in being a part of it.

So I haven't. But it's been percolating in a corner of my brain. I wanted to ignore it, but it won't really be ignored, and I guess there are a few reasons. One is that I'm a lesbian. And the other is that I'm a writer.

As a lesbian, my objections are pretty much what you'd expect. Amazon has a tag for "adult" products that it doesn't want to come up in its main searches for fear of alienating some consumers; somehow that tag got out of control, and although a great deal of material wound up getting deranked, the amount of GLBT stuff that got snuffed was highly disproportionate. This is part of an old, old scene, people. Ever since I came out I have struggled to make peace with the fact that I am someone that many parents do not want their children to know about. These parents would like to erase my existence from their children's universe entirely. I am seen as no more than a sexual being -- a woman who has sex with other women -- and parents do not want their children to know that I exist. I am "adult material", and I am reminded of it all the time. I am reminded of it when conservatives start vociferous campaigns to ban Heather Has Two Mommies from school libraries and curricula, so that children will not know who or what gay people are. I was reminded of it when λ and I went on our honeymoon and, as we walked hand-in-hand through the Magic Kingdom, a mother placed her hand over her son's eyes so that he would not see us.* I was reminded of it, again on our honeymoon, when λ and I were splashing around in the pool being lovey-dovey, as you would expect from any honeymooning newlyweds, and a man came up to us and asked us to "cut it out, just so my daughter don't see."

So I'm not surprised that someone mis-tagged queer materials as "adult" on Amazon. I understand that it was not a top-down policy, that it seems to have been part of an inept corporate game of telephone in which one person made the policy and another person implemented part of it and another person did a different part of it and somewhere along the line someone conflated "queer" and "adult" in their mind. I know how it happened. I live with it, with that conflation of "queer" and "obscene", every day.

What I think is funny is that a lot of people seem to think that the fact that this was not a top-down policy that Amazon implemented as a deliberate screw-you to the queer community somehow makes this all better. "It was a mistake!", I hear. "It wasn't a big conspiracy! For God's sake stop freaking out!"

I am not freaking out, but I understand why many people are. It is because we have lived with this ever since the day we came to understand who we are and who we love, and this is not about one random person doing one thing in isolation. The fact that somebody thought of LGBTQ materials as "adult" is the result of an entire society that reinforces that idea.

And it's not just about the idea. It's not just because we smell homophobia in the air. It's because literature provides us with a voice, and Amazon is the largest and -- we thought -- most democratized, egalitarian provider of literature in our society, and if these books are not available on Amazon, it takes our voice away. I literally got sick to my stomach thinking about some of the books that Amazon made unavailable -- thinking about what it would mean if there had never been a controversy and those books had quietly disappeared from the most mammoth bookseller in the world. We're talking Stone Butch Blues, the raw, agonizing book that blew a hole in the status quo and told uncountable transpeople that they weren't alone, and we're talking about Gender Outlaw, which blew the hole wider and shouted a challenge to gender binaries loud and clear. We're talking Maurice and Well of Loneliness, two books that came around three-quarters of a century ago and told the world that gays and lesbians exist. We're talking about queer YA books, which tell teenagers struggling to come out that it's okay, others have been through this, they'll get through it and they have a place in the world. We're talking about books on the history of homophobia. We're talking about self-help books on coming out. We are talking about books that have been huge milestones in the history of the queer movement, books that have meant so much to God knows how many people and that we have already fought the censorship of time and again and again and again. For decades people have fought to keep these books alive and visible and available. Recently they became unavailable through the default bookseller of our time. Oh, it was a fuckup, Amazon? You didn't mean to? Gosh, but I so do not give a shit. Get it un-fucked up. Now.

That's my rant on the queer-censoring aspect. Now for the other part.

LGBTQQIA books are not the only books that were censored. You hear a lot of talk like they were, because there was this huge proportion of them that were, and because, like I've said, as far as queer people are concerned, this is a new slice at a very old wound. But there are plenty of books that were stripped of sales rankings that plain-out contained sexual material. This means everything from books on rape and sexual assault (Men Who Rape: The Psychology of Sexual Assault) to Lady Chatterley's Lover. So let me talk about censorship in general for a moment, because although I'm probably not saying anything original, if they were things that everyone understood, this stuff would never happen.

The books that were stripped of their ranks were, almost without exception, books that were already well-known and controversial. The books that aren't well-known never hit high enough in the sales rankings to turn up high in the search results, I guess, and thus didn't merit being flagged as "adult". And here's what that did: it ensured that the books that were the most groundbreaking, the most important, got snuffed first. Books that attract controversy are books that tell truths that people don't want to hear. A romance novel with sex scenes full of milk-white breasts cupped in the palms of big, strong hands and climaxing explosions of hot, wet passion are not going to get censored -- as we can see from the fact that they didn't. Books about heterosexual sex that titillate a little bit, but present no further challenges to the pretty sunshine-and-posies world that we like to pretend we live in, just aren't going anywhere. And, you know, that's great. Those are fun to read as an escape. Sure. No problem.

But then there are the books that are scary to the mainstream. The books about little girls who grow up to dress as men and act as men and experience pure agony when they're forced into a woman suit that doesn't fit, and who get hit and raped and arrested and degraded in innumerable ways for it. The books that tell you that the nice, clean-cut, good old boy from down the street might just get off on forcing women to have sex with him. The books about people who, owning their own bodies as all of us do, decide to rent them out to make some money. All of the books about things that people condemn because they're scared of them, because they shatter the rose-colored glasses. Because when you murmur "Ignore it and it'll go away," these books and the people who write them get in your face and say "We will not BE ignored."

So that's what Amazon blundered into with their "adult" tags. And we see which side they picked.

( musing on the current book I'm writing; generalized discussion of rape, but mostly I'm cutting not for triggers but for length )

Censorship is about free speech, but not in the sense of some dry legal principle. Censorship is what happens when society tells people either that they don't exist, or that they shouldn't exist, or that the things they believe in shouldn't exist. So someone or a group of someones gather the courage to stand up and shout for their basic right to an acknowledged existence. And society -- angrily or casually, actively or passively -- goes "Nope. As far as we're concerned, you aren't there."

Censorship is the denial of the existence of groups of people -- or of their choices, which are part of who people are and become more so as others define them by those choices. It's about making people invisible. It's about erasure.

Amazon decided to flag "adult" books. The trouble is that we don't live in a "non-adult" world. We don't live in a world where "adult" things do not exist and when we encounter them it is generally not because we choose to step into an alter universe of "adulthood". The things Amazon classes as "adult" are all around us, and some people's lived experiences overlap very little with such things, but for some of us, those things *are* our lived experience. This is why the fact that the tag was mismanaged to shut out LGBTQ material doesn't change the fundamental wrongness of the tag at all. There is no up side in preventing people from finding information that they are actively searching for. And there's nothing acceptable in whitewashing reality to help people's pretty fantasies of what the world ought to look like.

So. Yeah. Get it fixed, Amazon.

*And because she was watching us and not him, she walked him straight into a trash can.

It's St. Patrick's Day! And I, who am about the Irishest person in the world apart from people who actually live in Ireland*, have no plans for the night at all. Thus I am left at a loss as to how I can spend today in a suitably Irish manner. (I am wearing a green shirt that says "St. Patrick's Day," but below that it says "2008" and I bought it at Old Navy for $4, so I don't think that is the most authentically Irish experience in the world.) So I decided to run down my options, but my prospects look a little bleak.

Idea: Get drunk on lunch break.
This would probably not please my coworkers.

Idea: Sing Irish songs all day in full voice so people can appreciate the beauty of Irish music and culture.
This would also probably not please my coworkers.

Idea: Wander around getting into brawls with random people in the street.
This would probably not please the random people in the street, and since I am 5'1", they are likely to be bigger than I.

Idea: Eat a lot of potatoes.
I do not have a lot of potatoes.

Idea: Find a bunch of snakes. Lead them out of somewhere.
I do not have a bunch of snakes.

Idea: Go around to various churches and have masses said for the repose of the souls of people named Patrick, Bridget, Kathleen, William, and Moira.
I am sure all the dead Patricks, Bridgets, Kathleens, Williams, and Moiras in the world would appreciate this, but having masses said for the repose of souls costs money, which I do not have any of. I can light votive candles for dead Patricks, Bridgets, etc., but even that carries a "donation" of $1.00. And are you going to light a votive candle and not make the donation with a nun staring you down? I didn't think so.

Idea: Learn what ”Erin go Bragh" means.
I do this every year and every year I forget. Wikipedia says it's "Ireland forever". Let's see if I remember next year.

Idea: Formulate serious, well-informed opinions on important issues in Irish politics and current events, and waylay people to discuss said opinions.
This sounds like hard work and would annoy people.

Idea: In all written communication today, spell things according to traditional Irish Gaelic spellings.
The annoyance that other people would suffer and the illegibility of my resultant writing would be nothing matched up to the awesomeness of this plan; but I only know how to spell about three words in Irish Gaelic, which is seriously the most impenetrable phonetic structure I have ever seen in my entire life. I can wander around writing "Eoin Ui Mhaille" all day and hope that I will run into a sadly transliterated Owen O'Malley somewhere who will appreciate it, but those odds seem slim. Plus I am a transcriptionist and so doing this would probably get me fired.

Idea: Every time somebody starts drunkenly singing "Danny Boy", explain tartly that "Danny Boy" is not really an Irish song, as the sob-story lyrics were written by an Englishman who then ripped off an old Irish melody, not being sufficiently talented to write his own. Tell them all that they should sing "The Confession of Devorgilla", the original Irish lyrics to the tune, instead. Demonstrate.
This, like so many other suggestions, would irritate everyone; but I am beginning to accept that if I want to be very very Irish today, I am probably going to wind up annoying someone. Whether this means that all Irish people are annoying or just that my specific way of being Irish is annoying I do not know, but I suspect the latter. Either way I think this is a very important thing for me to do, and so I will do it. Maybe if I do find some way to get drunk later in the day I will modify my plan and sing the more popular and more maudlin "Irish Love Song" lyrics, which came about later, rather than "The Confession of Devorgilla". There are times when it is necessary to relax one's purist stance.

Idea: Preface everything I say today with "Faith and begorrah!"
I see no reason why this is not the best idea on Earth.

So it's faith and begorrah that I shall be saying, and may my ancestors smile brightly down upon me for it! Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!

*Exaggeration, but I am actually something like 96% Irish by blood. I was sort of sad the day I found out about the great-great-great-whoeveritwas ancestor of mine who was French-Canadian. I have nothing against French-Canadians, but I wanted the 100%. Also there is a family legend that says that French-Canadian was in turn descended from Vasco da Gama somewhere along the line, and I don't like Vasco da Gama.

There are many serious and intellectually taxing matters about which I could make a serious and intellectually taxing post right now, I am sure. However, I do not care. Thus:

I caught part of the the final episode and all of the post-final-episode of The Bachelor last night. No, I have never seen an episode of The Bachelor before, but I examined the situation of the participants very closely for an hour and fifteen minutes minus commercials, so I feel qualified to pronounce judgment on everyone involved and to divine their futures.

To Melissa -- You seem very nice and sensible and I really love the fact that when you showed up on TV to get dumped by Mr. Asshole you did it in a skintight strapless black-pleather number. I have never seen a better "fuck you, if you don't want this you don't deserve it" dress in my life. I am sorry that you seem to be under the misapprehension that Mr. Asshole has something more than a nanogram of Q-tip fluff floating around inside his head, something that would make him worth yours or anyone's time. Because he doesn't. Anyway, I am also sorry that your engagement got broken off on national television, but in the long run I am sure you will be happier this way than if you'd married the creep, so cheer up, sleepy Jean. Tell you what, go out and get a book deal with a big advance. It'll be remaindered in record time, but you should wear that dress on the cover. I'll smile.

To Molly -- Do I even have your name right? You were not very memorable. Anyway, you did the right thing when you gaped at Mr. Asshole for about five minutes after he asked you to come back to him, but then you screwed it up by telling him you were happy to hear him say that. See above re: nanogram of Q-tip brain. Here is how this is going to go with Mr. Asshole, Molly: if you decide to turn him down, he will pine over you for months and months on end and leave you whiny voice messages and probably show up at your doorstep at some point in a limo that ABC paid for and with a bunch of roses that ABC also paid for, begging you for another chance. The correct response to this involves the raising of one eyebrow and one specifically chosen finger. Because if you take him back, here is what is going to happen: he is going to be madly in love with you for precisely two weeks, and then he is going to start obsessing over Melissa again. And then some anonymous source who may or may not be him is going to tell the tabloids about how he is obsessing over Melissa, and then he is going to show up on her doorstep with the limo and flowers that ABC have provided, and if she is dumb enough to take him back he is going to sproing back to you again, unless he starts obsessing over some third girl from the show, in which case heaven help all of you. So seriously, show him the eyebrow and the finger, get an unlisted phone number, and see if ABC will pay for a bouncer to stand at your door in the hopes that Mr. Asshole will show up and there will be a big awesome messy scene that will give them a ratings boost. They might go for it.

To Mr. Asshole -- You are an asshole. This is why I have not bothered to look up your name. Also because you clearly have no idea who you are or what you are doing in life, and if you don't know I see no reason to bother. You are a weebly little twerp whose ears stick out and you epitomize the ideology that I hate most in American society's perception of love and commitment, which is that love consists of having an exciting string of hormones and endorphins all sparking in just the right way for the rest of your life, and if the hormones and endorphins ever get disarranged or falter for a minute that's it, it's time to call the whole thing off. Commitment, engagement, and marriage are not about endorphins, you doof. Every time you blurped out that line about "Melissa, when I told you I would do anything to make you happy for the rest of your life, in the moment I meant it..." I wanted to jam a pencil up your nose. How excellent for her that you meant that in that moment! Do you think you will mean it again in a moment in several weeks? What about at 12:47 last Tuesday? How did you feel then? And Mr. Asshole, what do you do when you're sleeping? This is a very serious question, because if you are sleeping you might not be conscious of how you are feeling, but then how do you know who you should be married to? Maybe you should get divorced every night before you go to sleep just so you can be sure that you're not married to someone you might be feeling the wrong way about. In the moment. And, hey, look, buddy-boy: if you want to skip out on a girl when the sparking chemistry hits a slow patch, that's your prerogative. It's called dating. In that arena you would be called one of those immature playboys who's not sure what he wants and isn't ready to settle down, but man is he a good kisser!, and you would have plenty of company. It's just when you get engaged and then try to do that that you turn into a full-blown Mr. Asshole. Something to keep in mind.

To Ty, Mr. Asshole's Kid -- I suspect your dad keeps telling you you're going to have a new mommy. I am really sorry.

To LJ -- Yes, I just made a long post about The Bachelor. You wanna make something of it?

P.S. to LJ -- Yes, I also know that this is reality television and Mr. Asshole probably signed a contract that said he had to propose to one woman at the end of the show. And I know that anyone who goes on such a show probably deserves what they get. But my understanding is that in the however many seasons this show has been going on, the majority of the final couples have not ultimately gotten married, but they have also managed not to do a followup episode in which the dude was like "OH I was SO RIGHT when I picked Girl X except that I was wrong but now I am SO RIGHT in picking Girl Y and also I cannot find my head!" And I always get very twitchy when people start doing that thing about love being an emotion and you can't help how you feel because if you are FALLING IN LOVE then there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT and all prior commitments are null and void. Also? That guy had big ears and was not attractive. Just saying.