Doing good

Two opportunities to do good:

The Berkeley Humane Society's Emergency Medical Fund featured pet at the moment is a puppy named Uber. She was left in their drop box at 7 weeks old with a broken and infected jaw. They fixed that, but then discovered one of her legs is growing wrong and needs major surgery to fix. The surgery will cost $4000! So they're fundraising for that as well as trying to find her a home. If you can spare a couple dollars for her surgery it will make a big difference. And if you know anybody who'd be willing to take in a dog with some medical needs (her jaw and leg may need more medical attention as she ages), please put them in touch with the folks at Berkeley Humane Society.

My cousin is in training before being deployed to Afghanistan with his National Guard battalion and is doing a lot of reading in his downtime. Getting books through the base is not a terribly speedy process, so he's running low on reading material. If you've got any books you would like to donate to him and his fellow soldiers, you can give them to me and I'll send them along. I've already taken down the books I was listing through Frugal Reader and will be sending him a few at a time over the next several months.

File under: Linkage
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Blog for Choice!

Today is Blog for Choice day. I'm late posting, but couldn't let the anniversary of Roe v. Wade go by without posting. Women's reproductive rights are under siege in this country -- even my home state of California was a target in the 40 Days of Forced Birth. Even the supposedly libertarian-minded Ron Paul is an "unshakeable foe of abortion" (read: thinks pregnant women should be forced to bear unwanted children to term) who has tried to define life as beginning at conception in federal law.

A few of the many reasons I am pro-choice, and vote accordingly:

• The government shouldn't be able to force anyone to have a particular roommate, let alone a particular person inside her body.
• The government shouldn't be able to have a say in anyone's medical decisions. Whether to have an abortion or not, and what kind to have, is between a woman and those she chooses to include.
• Pro-forced-birth folks aren't actually about saving babies, most of the time, they're about controlling women's sexuality. You can tell by the way they react to questions about how to punish women who get abortions in places where it's illegal (and another great link: here).
• If abortion is made illegal, the next thing on the chopping block is contraception. Plenty of pro-forced-birth movement folks are trying to get rid of contraception -- look at the hoo-hah over emergency contraception and the pharmacists who won't fill prescriptions for it. Or the doctors who won't give birth control pills to unmarried women.
• Nobody should be able to force a woman to bear a child she doesn't want. Full stop.

A note: Safe abortions will always be available to women with enough money, like myself. We can always go out of the country or wherever we have to.. But women who can't afford safe abortions will be likely to die if abortion is made illegal. I'm fighting less for myself and more for the women who don't have the advantages I do.

For more on what a nation where abortion is illegal is like, read this article on El Salvador. I've linked it a zillion times, but it's worth reading.

File under: Political Schtuff
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Blogroll

Man. My blogroll is getting outta control! Nevermind my actual RSS aggregator list. Feh.

So: NOTICE! I am cleaning out my blogroll, tidying it up so it'll be a bit more useful. For one thing, I'm taking out the list of Flickr feeds I subscribe to. You can see who I've got friended through Flickr by looking at my Flickr profile, so it's all there. No need to duplicate it here.

File under: Geekiness
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2007 Mix

My mix for 2007 is done! WOO! Now I just have to burn CDs for them as want 'em. As usual, my rules for this were a lot looser than the ones some of my friends use. For a song to merit inclusion in my 2007 mix, it must:

• Have come to my attention one way or another in 2007.
• Have been played over and over by me, or at least gotten stuck in my head a couple times or otherwise made itself really known to me during 2007 (a bunch of this year's songs are in Guitar Hero III and/or Rock Band (the two games have a fair amount of overlap).

It's kind of a weird mix. Weirder than usual for me, even. Track list below...

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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Bucket List

Wow. Roger Ebert savaged The Bucket List. I rather enjoyed the film, but I suspect that is largely because I am neither 70 nor a (current or former) cancer patient. Ebert is not the former, but he is the latter. Saccharine films like "The Bucket List" are perfectly charming unless you have personal experience with the things they are manhandling in pursuit of A Sweet And Illuminating Plotline.

File under: Movies
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Words

Giving Unconscious Mutterings a try again...

1. Dream big :: President
2. Competition :: Ribbons (horseback riding competition)
3. Torn :: Natalie Imbruglia
4. Modeling :: Scrawny
5. Coaster :: Beer (close second: One Fierce Beer Coaster -> Bloodhound Gang
6. Slut :: narrow-minded
7. Spread :: legs (I blame the previous word)
8. Amanda :: fangirl
9. Romance :: novel
10. Paradise :: City (Oh won't you please take me down!)

File under: Memes
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What I've been reading lately

New Yorker piece on Giulianni makes me loathe him even more than I did already. Ditto this An Oral History of Rudy Giuliani's Temper.

In a piece from Hilary Clinton's Senate bid a while back, Sars lays out why she hates Clinton. Sars says now that she hates Clinton less than she used to, but still doesn't like her. I also don't like Clinton, and I think the piece sums up well what those of us who want to like her but just don't are talking about.

...and Bring Back the Red-Blooded Bitch is a great article on bitches. Good stuff.

File under: Linkage
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Charlie Wilson's War

This piece about the new film Charlie Wilson's War is a solid one, and I strongly suggest that anybody who has seen or is thinking about seeing the film read it. I also suggest that anybody interested in modern politics check it out. Good stuff. Author Chalmers Johnson calls the filmmakers out on glossing over the fact that they are lionizing a man who essentially armed al Quaeda.

File under: Movies
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Journal vs. Blog

Fadethecat on why she has a journal, not a blog.

The journal vs. blog debate has been going on for ages, and I think she sums up the difference really well. Journals are like the journals folks used to (or in my case, still do) keep on paper -- accounts of what you've been up to, your thoughts, etc.

I have a blog because a blog is a bit narrower in scope -- it's your thoughts, usually on a particular topic. You don't have to catch up if you've been away, you just go back to posting. While I am happy to twitter on and off about what I'm up to in the moment, but the thought of having my journal online where anybody could read it gives me the willies. I do have an unusually open blog, but it's not as open as a journal would be.

As I often tell people when describing my blog, I have this blog because I used to send things out to my peeps in bursts via email, and the blog lets me avoid clogging their inboxes and possibly reach a wider audience.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

2007 in Review

The thought of trying to sum up 2007 thoroughly is rather intimidating. So, here is a Mayfly (found the concept via Rich):

January - May: Wedding.
Wonderful honeymoon.
Back to regular life: job, Aikido, fibromyalgia, knitting, spirituality, cats ...
Family reunion.
Family drama.
Fake guitar games are awesome.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Heh.

No surprise here. I'm Lawful Good? SHOCK!

Continued...

File under: I'm a What?
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Happy New Year!

I don't make New Years Resolutions anymore -- I realized a while back that they invariably turn from a list of Things I Will Do! into a list of Things I Didn't Do And Now Feel Bad About. And I don't need more things to feel bad about. Does anyone?

I do like New Years, though. I'm an order-minded sort of person, and thus I like neat and tidy boundaries and the order of things not yet done. New blank books. Fresh reams of paper. A new year. There's the smell of possibility in the air. The smell of hope.

So no resolutions for me, this year, but good wishes to all.

File under: Pure Ego!
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