Epidemic: The World's Most Over-Used Word

America... You have been lied to. No, not by the Government (I mean, yes, occasionally, but they're not who I'm talking about), or environmentalist, or even Al Gore.

You've been lied to by autism "experts". And Jenny McCarthy, though if you have functioning gray matter, I'm pretty sure you knew that.

How have they lied to you? They have told you that instances of autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs from now on) have reached "epidemic" proportions. They have told you that "1 in 5" people -not just kids, but adults too- are autistic or ASD. Do a Google search for "famous autistics" and it'll return page after page of results. Chances are, you know someone who's autistic or on the autism spectrum! And if you vaccinated your child, you get a Bad Mom Award, because they cause autism! Stupid, silly science.

(Keep in mind, most of these people speculated to be autistic are dead. I don't know if it's unethical to diagnose mental disorders posthumously, but it can't ever be correct because it can never be proven. That's my big beef with these lists. And their diagnosing fictional characters as being autistic. That's getting really carried away now, don't you think?)

...Okay, I've probably lost some readers by now. Hear me out: I'm not saying that I don't believe autism or ASDs are real. They are, absolutely; in fact, my best friend in elementary and middle school was Asperger's. And no, I don't believe for the tiniest nanosecond that vaccines cause autism, any more than I do having parents who withhold affection does (yes, that used to be considered the main cause of autism.); more than that, I've done my own research on that claim and, to date, I have not found anything that has convinced me in the slightest, so please don't try, because I've probably already checked your source. I'm not trying to start shit here, or even trying to change the minds of people who are anti-vaxxing; I'm just trying to write an entry that will make people think about, or even re-think, their positions on autism. And to prove that it's cripplingly over-diagnosed.

Put it this way: When Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine, came out, people were viciously opposed to the idea, not so much of another vaccine, but of the idea that 1 in 2 people in the US has some form of HPV. But in my experience, you can casually say that 1 in 5 people in the US is autistic or on the autism spectrum... And no one bats an eye.

I have to ask, why? These are the same people who start smoking at the ears at the mere idea of a suggestion that half of all sexually-active people in the US, presumably including them, could have an STD which is absolutely controllable with medicine and will most likely not interfere with their day-to-day lives. But when faced with an actual, life-disrupting condition which can't be treated with medicine, will not temporarily go away, and will mark you or your child for the rest of your lives, it seems like most people are willing to put absolute faith in its being so common.

Some sources have put the number of children with autism/ASDs in the millions. The Autism Society of America says up to 1.5 million Americans -adults and children- are autism/ASD. They also claim that up to 1 in 91 births in the US are of autistics. (Very awkward sentence, I know, but look at the content.) However, the Centers for Disease Control (the people we should listen to) puts childhood autism rates at about 300,000, a much more reasonable number, not to mention, once you really think about it, a more plausible number. You know the only problem with this number? It's unappealing.

I believe 300,000's lack of appeal lies in the human fear of isolation. If you or your child is diagnosed with autism, and you hear that 300,000 other people are as well, you're going to feel scared, but worse than feeling scared is feeling alone. This isn't the fault of the parents or the people with autism. It's human nature: When you're staring at something this huge, you want to know that there are other people in the world who are facing the same thing. Humans are pack animals. That's all there is to it.

But, there are psychiatrists out there (a lot of them, evidently) who will take advantage of this natural human response to bloat the numbers. So, instead of being just one of a piddling 300,000 people with autism, you're now part of a community two million strong! Two million?! Wow! Some states don't have a population that big! Some countries, even. Hell, Antarctica doesn't have two million people!

But such over-diagnosis is dangerous. If a child is diagnosed with autism and it turns out they were just shy, at best you're going to have a really embarrassed doctor apologizing to you; at worst, they've been unfairly singled out, with people encouraging behaviors "because you can't help it; you're autistic". And as Michael Savage as that sounds, stop and think: If you encourage, however inadvertently, a behavior without truly understanding why it's happening, who are you helping? More importantly, who are you hurting? Encouraging bad behavior in the name of something like autism not only hurts the person with that behavior, but it paints an incredibly negative picture of everyone else with autism/ASD. It's exactly what happened when Rain Man came out. Everyone who saw that movie suddenly thought all autistics counted toothpicks, screamed in terror when someone turned on a hot water faucet, and threw massive tantrums in airports.

Simply put, it's not true. And in my humble opinion, Rain Man was horrendous portrayal of people with autism. I much preferred Snow Cake, not only because Angela Pell (who wrote the screenplay) is the mother of an autistic child, but because Sigourney Weaver actually lived with a high-functioning autistic woman for three weeks to prepare for her role as an adult autistic. But in any case, neither movie should be used as a yardstick for defining autism, which, excuse me, is what I think quite a few psychiatrists are doing. But in reality, autism is nowhere near that simple. I know, it's preaching to the choir, but... Um, you know, I don't know if it is, actually. Given the supposed prevalence, it seems like a lot of people really do think autism is that simple.

Not only that autism itself is that simple, but that what causes it is, too. And here is where I pose the touchy question to people who are anti-vaxxing: If vaccines do cause autism, then why isn't everyone who's ever been vaccinated autistic? And I've already stated that real cases of autism are much, much lower than the "AUTISM IS EVERYWHERE!!!" crowd would have you believe, so you're gonna have to prove it otherwise. Plus, consider that Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who proposed the link in the first place, fixed his data to get this outcome. And that's all I'm going to say on that subject.

Simply put: No one knows what causes autism. Doctors, psychiatrists, scientists, none of them, and as such, theories abound. A few years ago, a study from Cornell University suggested that watching TV might cause autism. Others suggest that autism could be genetic. (I regard this as one of the best theories; other mental disorders, like bipolar and schizophrenia, tend to run in families.) Atypical brain development might be a cause. So could immunodeficiency issues, or food allergies. There may also be a tenuous connection between autism and celiac disease. But so far, they're all only theories.

As a supplement to the autism "epidemic"... If you were alive and out of school in the 1990s, you heard about the startling numbers of kids with AD/HD. And if you were in school in the 1990s, you knew someone with AD/HD or you had it yourself.

In 1994, when I started kindergarten, I was one of those kids with AD/HD. Me and (I'm not even close to exaggerating) about fifteen of my thirty classmates. I also went to an inner-city school at the time, which I'm sure played a huge part in my diagnosis.

Now here's where the big damn problem of over-diagnosis comes in, guns a-blazin': Even if I was or am AD/HD, nothing has ever been done to really help me. As a matter of fact, when I was diagnosed, all the doctor did was shove a bottle of Ritalin into my mom's hand and say "one per day." I never saw a therapist. I was never taught any techniques to keep myself in my seat. No one ever checked my progress, because I had no progress goals to make. All there was was Ritalin, and believe me, that was the biggest waste of insurance ever.

My story isn't unique. The current percentage of kids diagnosed with AD/HD is five. Are some of those kids AD/HD? Absolutely. But how are they being helped? The simple answer is, they aren't. They're being lumped into a category, and that's it. And because AD/HD is so over-diagnosed, no one knows how to treat it.

I worry -legitimately, I think- that autism, Asperger's syndrome, and other ASDs are just becoming the go-to "my kid isn't doing what the other kids are, what's wrong with him?" diagnosis that AD/HD was and continues to be.

Actually, I was told I was "almost certainly" Asperger's in high school... Because I'm a Harry Potter geek. Okay, so I can quote almost any page in all seven books, big whoop; I know for a damn fact I'm not the only one. (Here's lookin' at you, Steve Vander Ark.) The next word out of my mouth? "Bullshit!" Which not only earned me an afternoon in detention, but also got me a little note in my file saying, I'm pretty sure, "Yup, Aspie."

Hell, if being enthralled with seven books about a nerd who casts wicked-awesome spells for cleaning his room is a definite marker of Asperger's, then what about my brother? I've seen him eat, and I swear to Christ, he's worse than I am: Say he has a chicken boob, mashed potatoes, and green beans on his plate. None of those three foods will touch, and he will eat them all one at a time. So yeah, apparently my family is just full of people who sound like they should be from Colorado.

Hopefully, we will know what more about autism, and what causes it, in the near future, but until then, diagnosing everybody who puts their pencils in a straight line whenever they sit at their desk as autistic or ASD isn't going to help anyone. In the meantime, let's push to focus on true cases of autism and ASDs.

That's Not Support; That's Blithering

Ever see a thread on a forum that was entirely devoted to one cause? "Let Women Walk Around Topless!" "Stop Animal 'Crush' Videos!" "Get Billy Mays into a Salesman Hall of Fame!" And so on.

The one thing I've found in common with all of those threads? No one who posts on them, especially the most vocal posters, actually gives a shit about those causes. Oh sure, they might think they do, but a vast majority are, to use a cliche, "all bark and no bite."

This is a phenomenon I like to call "internet inactivism," which is probably the most direct name it could have. And the posters, of course, are "inactivists," they just don't know it. The hallmarks of internet inactivism and its inactivists are:

1. Post after post after post after goddamn motherfucking repetitive post about this, the most important of all causes. (AIDS and cancer research? Please. Who gives a shit about sickness when women are being horrendously repressed by not being allowed to flash their sweater-puppies?!)

2. Ridiculing the posters who dare to call them into question: "Look, I can see why this is important to you, but why aren't you out there trying to change toplessness laws instead of just writing about them?" "AD HOMINEM ATTACK!!! AD HOMINEM ATTACK! Burn the strawman!"

3. Exceedingly insane, though incredibly stupid, posts: "But don't you see?! Now it's women being forced to wear shirts. Soon we'll be forced to wear bras! And then we'll be forced to bind our feet! THINK OF THE CHINESE!"

But even the hallmarks don't annoy or scare me as much as the gross misinformation of these people: Misinformation, not only of what the phrases "ad hominem" or "strawman" mean (although that's certainly a bee in the bonnet), but of the topic they're so fervently defending, zombie-like. For example, sure, it's unfair that fat, ugly men can walk around topless just about anywhere and women can't, but maybe, just maybe, there's a reason, and just maybe that reason isn't mysogynistic. Maybe that reason has to do with how lawsuit-happy Americans are: Someone brushes up against a fully-clothed woman the wrong way and she sues; whether or not it was an accident, this guy now has no job and few prospects because it's on his permanent record: He sexually harassed a woman. Can you even begin to imagine how much worse liability would be if we were all topless?

(Don't think I'm being sexist here: I'm a woman, and I'm all for gender equality and women running around topless wherever men can, but I also know that women (1) are insane and (2) fight dirty. You can't have a vagina for twenty years and not learn this.)

The problem with misinformation is that it leads to hysteria. In every dystopian story ever written, filmed, or told, the dictatorial government was founded by keeping the masses misinformed and, therefore, afraid. Organizations like PETA have gotten most of their support by keeping their followers misinformed about their cause. People think of PETA and think, "They want to get rid of animal cruelty! What a noble cause!" And it is, but what Ingrid Newkirk and her cronies aren't telling you is much more extreme than that. From Ingrid's own mouth: "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment." Basically, that means you can't own a dog or a cat, I can't ride a horse, and those people with cancer and AIDS can't be treated because scientists can't test their experimental drugs on them. There's no telling how many PETA members actually understood the mission statement, but it's very safe and accurate to say that most of them, well, didn't.

Which isn't to say that misinformed people are stupid. What they are, above anything else they might be, is ignorant. Most often, they're ignorant of the fact that posting on the internet is about the most ineffectual thing you can do for a cause.

Don't confuse posting on a cause with, say, a blogathon for a cause. The blogathon raises money for its cause, and money is a real and very helpful thing for it. But to talk endlessly about it does nothing; it barely raises awareness, thanks to that all-too-human ability to tune out annoying windbags.

So really, all I'm saying is this: If you're serious about a cause, and you really want to further it, take some real action: Go door-to-door to gather signatures on a real petition that you'll show to your local congressmen. Donate money to your cause. Volunteer for them. But for Bob's sake, shut up on the Internet about it!

They Leave Me Cold

I think people almost unanimously agree on the best inventions ever -the Internet, cars, computers, and the like- but has anyone ever thought of the worst inventions?

I'm not talking about inventions that were bad and failed, like circular homes or jet-packs. I'm talking about things we use in our every day lives that cause us a great deal of grief and frustration.

For me, that invention is the ice cube tray.

I'm a reasonably smart person, I graduated from high school, and I've completed a year of college. I can read just fine and I can do enough math to figure out my bills. I can cook and I've figured out the fine art of Googling with discretion. I've even managed to have a driver's license for two years without any accidents, tickets, or even being pulled over and let go with a warning. I'm no Einstein, but if you leave me alone with something long enough, I'll figure out how it works.

But hand me an ice-cube tray and I somehow turn into a helpless, drooling two-year-old. I still don't know how to hold a just-filled tray without sloshing half of the water out onto my favorite shoes. It tends to happen when I'm standing perfectly still. Sometimes it even happens if I set the thing down on the counter and walk ten feet away from it.

And another pickle entirely is getting the ice out of it. I'm not an incredibly strong person, but I somehow manage to crack or break at least five ice cube trays every year just by twisting them to get the ice out. And you know that one cube of ice that just will not come out no matter what you do? You can tap the bottom of the tray, you can whack it against a counter (which doesn't break it, for some odd reason), you can run it under hot water... And it STILL won't come out!

So, Genteel Readers, I ask you: If there is one thing in your day-to-day life that you wish you could go back in time and club its inventor upside the head just before they had the idea, what is it?

I'll respect you if you can prove I should.

Every now and again, my parents and I go out for dinner at a little Chinese buffet in our neighborhood. It's nothing spectacular, save the people-watching opportunities it affords, which is enough of a draw by itself for someone like me. Last nights's was one of the most unique in the two years I've been eating there.

We chose a table behind some ladies and their kids, and the kids were noisy. Really noisy. Testing the patience of the Patron Saint of Noisy Kids noisy. And they were getting on my nerves, especially one boy who kept walking around and yelling at the top of his lungs. Not yelling anything coherent, just yelling. Given that fact, and that there were four women and six kids, I figured that he was special-needs of some sort.

Sitting next to us was a husband-and-wife team of perfect ambassadors to Middle America: Fat, wearing badly-fitting tracksuits, bald guy, and stuffing their faces, and both at least fifteen years older than either of my parents (yes, this is important). When my mom, stepdad, and I started talking, so did they. Over us, and even with the yelling kids in the room, too loudly for a two-person conversation. As in, they did not want to hear the three of us (who, to them, probably looked like high-up mucky-muck white-collar leeches) carrying on a conversation, so they'd make sure we couldn't. Some people are so touchy. Little did they know, my mom and I speak Eyebrow and Laugh quite fluently and my stepdad has a voice that you can hear no matter how low he talks. We ignored them and worked through our plates of General Tso's Chicken.

That is, until Mr. Middle America started grumbling, audibly, about the kids. "Just let 'em scream," he'd grumble. "Like they own the place. Fuckin' pickers." (Did I mention the women were Mexican? Or at least they looked it; they were all speaking unaccented English.) I caught him glaring a few more times at my family, then turning away and grumbling "yuppie" and "herty-terty," which I think was supposed to be "hoity-toity," but whatever. We kept playing the Ignore the Ignorants game. As I got up for more food, I caught the man looking at me, or more accurately, my chest. I turned his head around with a special glare of mine that says, crystal-clear, "If you don't stop looking at my rack THIS FUCKING INSTANT I will pop out your eyes and eat them like grapes." Hell, the guy could have looked like Aaron Eckhart and I still would have stomped on his balls, if the opportunity presented itself.

Then, when I sat back down at my table, The Stepdad and I started talking. Through no fault of my own, I have a very intelligent-sounding voice (deep, clear, unaffected by regional pronunciation for the most part even while having an inexcusably Midwestern accent), so I'm pretty sure I could have been talking about wallowing in pig shit and it would have upset the Hutt wannabe at the next table.

The Stepdad asked why I'd gotten home so late.

"Homework," I said. "And I'm still not done. I've got a three-page essay revision due tomorrow, and it's a bear. [*murrhgrrryupstermuhhumm* went the creature at the next table.] "It's on vegetarianism, but it's supposed to be objective." [*Mirrrumgrowlsnortfuckincollegekid*] "And I hated the way it came out. But it was either objective on a vegetarian diet or objective about censorship in schools, and it's physically impossible for me to be objective about censorship." [*Enuff with them SMART WORDS!*... Okay, he didn't say that, but you know when you run across someone whose head is transparent?]

Mrs. Middle America got up to refill her plate, and this is when I started feeling sorry for her: The whole time, and I do mean the whole time, she was away, just over a half-wall with a six-inch pane of thin, painted glass that was about three feet shy of touching the ceiling, he wouldn't stop audibly whining for her to "hurry up; come ooonnnnnn, hurry up!" with a few "you fat, stupid bitch"es peppered in there for effect. This made my mom angry, and I could tell we'd be leaving if he didn't shut his mouth PDQ.

After his wife (excuse me, I need to gargle now; what a horrible person to "belong" to) came back with her food, White Trash the Hutt went up to refill his own plate, and as he came back, he snarled at one of the women, "Yeah, just let the little fuck run around screamin' like a banshee."

"He can't help it!" She snapped.

"Oh yes he can! If my son ever did that-"

She cut him off. "I bet your son wasn't autistic." Which explained the yelling, and the same exact look came over my and my parents' faces: Understanding and admiration for the mother, and utter disgust for Bob Ewell.

"Autism. Fancy word fer 'spoiled fuckin' brat'." He muttered.

"Yeah, well, you just shut up about things you don't know."

Then she turned around and ignored him, at the exact same moment my mom slammed her hand down on the table, stood up, looked at him, and said, "I've had enough." This I have to include: He had enough sense to be embarrassed. Probably not nearly as embarrassed as he should have been, but it's a start. Maybe in a hundred years their line will have improved enough for their great-grandspawn to be able to eat at a family restaurant without looking like giant assholes wearing hats. But I quite clearly heard him say, as I was getting up, "Bet you have, fat-ass." Now, my mom is no supermodel -how many 49-year-old women raise two kids by themselves and look like one, anyway- but to what depths this guy had to reach to bring up the nerve to insult her, when she is at least 150 lbs. lighter than him, I can't even begin to fathom.

Between that, his incessant heartburn, and his insulting of an autistic six-year-old, I think you'll all forgive me this one piece of smart-assery: As the three of us stood to leave, the kids all started wailing again. I said, loudly enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear, "Sing, sweet children, siiing!" It got a huge laugh out of the mothers, and even my mom couldn't stop laughing while she tried to scold me. (The Stepdad has the same sense of humor as mine, so he hoofed it out of there before Fatso the Hutt could try to threaten him. Try. The Stepdad is 6'4" and built like a linebacker. The people who try to pick fights with him are very stupid, very short, or very drunk, or more often, all three. And he doesn't fight. He stands up, looks down at them, and says "Go away.")

Which brings me to the title of this essay: I have heard, probably thousands of times in my life, to "respect your elders!" And it always, always always ALWAYS, comes from someone who's pulled a stunt so epically stupid it would humiliate a two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I say, if more of the elders in my life acted like adults, I would respect more of them. Butt time spent on this planet doesn't make you wise or worthy of gratuitous respect, especially when you behave like an animal.

*breathes* It just baffles me, sometimes.

It's like Porky's, only not as funny.

The Worst Sex (Education) in History

Florida’s bay area is experiencing a huge increase in STDs, with rates of infection among teenagers nearly doubled since the 1990s. It’s a statistic that doesn’t make any sense (didn’t we just hear that you guys are having less sex these days?) except that Florida is one of the many states that began teaching abstinence-only sex education about, oh, ten years ago.

Wow, weird coincidence, huh?

Most people would look at these stats and conclude that abstinence education—which has been criticized for, among other things, misrepresenting the effectiveness of condoms in preventing pregnancy and STDs—is neither effective nor educational. But for fans of abstinence education, not even an army of syphilis-infected 14-year-olds proves that their programs don’t work. Boy, would I love to be a fly on the wall at those school board meetings:

Board Member #1: Bill, I just don’t understand it. We’ve had our abstinence education program in place for ten years, but kids are still doing it!

Board Member #2: I know! They’re… they’re… sexing each other! All the time!

Board Member #1: I mean, what more do they want? We told them not to do it!

Board Member #2: We did! We told them specifically not to sex each other! It’s like they aren’t listening. What are we supposed to do now?

Non-Clueless Board Member: Maybe we should expand the program to include some information about condoms.

Board Member #1: No way. Are you crazy? You know what will happen! First you show them a condom, and the next thing you know, they’re running all over the place with their dingles and hoo-has hanging out!

Slightly Less Clueless Board Member: Dingles and… do you mean “penises” and “vaginas”?

Board Member #1: I will not tolerate language like that at this meeting!

Slightly Less Clueless Board Member: But those are the scientific term—

Board Member #1: Enough! Look, how about this: let’s just go back out there and tell them not to have sex with each other. Except this time we’ll say it, like, really loud.

Board Member #2: Great idea. Really, I don’t understand why they’re having such a hard time with this. Just don’t have sex! That’s it! How hard is it to just not have sex?

Board Member #1: I don’t get it either, Bill. Abstinence isn’t so hard. I mean, my wife hasn’t had sex with me in years.

Okay, maybe it is as funny as Porky's.

Hey Fiji, Got Any Room for Me?

So I've been in a major funk for the last week or so. And I'm sitting here, in my uber-patronizing "Life Skills" class (read: My school wants me to fork over $70 more dollars, so they came up with a course so stupid and pop-psych it could only have been developed by Dr. Phil), which is NOT IMPROVING THINGS. Wonder if the President has any position on extraneous, pointless, yet mandatory college classes?

Speaking of the President... I like the guy. Again, not news if you've been reading me for any length of time. But I also accept that he's human and can't do it all. I think he's got a good head on his shoulders and some great (if unorthodox) ideas to stimulate the economy. Plus, I like that he's got a sense of humor and is intelligent enough to use it. This country hasn't had a leader like that since... God knows when. His so-called "cult of personality" is just the fact that he's likeable: He doesn't pretend to be a higher being than us just because he's the President, he's admitted to and taken responsibility for his mistakes, and he's not throwing the frightening amount of authority he inherited from Bush in our faces and demanding that we accept it.

And I'd like to also point out that this country has been so thoroughly fucked in its ass by the Bush/Cheney regime that there is no way in any possible realm that Obama could undo all of the damage in one term. There's no way he could undo it all in two terms, if we have progressed so far. Bush may have inherited a semblance of a "recession" (the Dot-Com Bust, and the fundies and neo-cons are reminding the rest of us about it at every turn), well, how shall I put this? Whoop-de-fuckin'-doo.

Let me ask you something, Fundies and Neo-Cons: How bad was the unemployment rate during the Dot-Com Bust? How many people lost their houses? Were thousands of jobs being lost every single day? How many people in my position -college students in their early 20s- were worried that they might not even be able to secure a minimum-wage job? How many people went to work every day worried that they might not be coming back the next? Not nearly the numbers we're dealing with now. Not even in the same ballpark.

The Dot-Com Bust was a shadow of a real recession. This, what we are going through right now, is a recession, folks, and Bush proved that he couldn't handle it in the last few months of his reign of blinding idiocy. So where was your hero's big plan for something like this? Where do you think McCain's would have been?

Obama might be proposing a huge stimulus plan, and the number is scary but remember, the tried-and-previously-true methods of pulling ourselves out of this situation didn't work. So what else is he supposed to do? Shove his head up his ass and say "Try it again, Sam"? And what would that do? You know, I hate to point it out because it's wasted words to some, but you can only crash a car into a brick wall so many times before you or your car dies. That line about "If at first you don't succeed, try try again" comes with an invisible sub-heading: "But since you didn't succeed the first way, you'd best try another plan of attack."

And I've also heard people criticizing the $4,000 for college as long as you serve 100 hours of community service as a throwback to the Hitler Youth Brigade. Fut the whuck?! When the fundies and neo-cons hear about a single mother who works full-time at McDonald's and still can't feed her kids, and is getting zero support from her deadbeat ex, and so uses food stamps to feed her brood, all they say is "cry me a river" and "fuckin' freeloader." So basically, in a callous way they're telling us that you can't get something for nothing, right? So WHY, why, in the name of that G-O-D person you love so much and who is supposed to be merciful and compassionate to the weak but still has a penchant for sending people to a pit filled with eternal fire and brimstone and agony... WHY are you calling the 100 hours of community service for $4,000 of college money a "Hitler Youth Brigade"? Obama is agreeing with you! Trust me, if you want or need $4,000 badly enough, you'll do just about anything to get it. Would you like to know the number of times I've considered jerking off truck drivers just to pay my relatively small and few bills?

To quote a certain demonic barber: "These are desperate times, love, and desperate measures are called for." So if the desperate measures consist of spending to stimulate the economy and giving a real and useful reward for community service, baby, let's keep being desperate.

But in the meantime, if people don't actually back off the president long enough to see what long-term gain may be gotten from the short-term pain, I'm going to keep looking at uninhabited islands. Anyone care to join me?

Obama Says "I Think I Made a Mistake"

Here's something I wonder:

For the last eight years, we had a President who lied to us, underhanded Congress and the Senate, defied UN conventions and regulations, started an illegal war, mishandled our funds, ignored the signs of the shaky economy, used the Constitution to wipe his ass, and basically challenged anyone to stand up to him because he was the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. That was George W. Bush's reign of "I'm the President and you can't fault me."

Now we have Obama, who has already admitted that his hiring of Tom Daschle, in light of Daschle's tax indiscretions, was "a mistake". A mistake on his part, no less. This was copied and pasted from the CNN interview I linked to:

"[U]ltimately, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. And I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people, and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes."

Now here's my question: Why is it that when Bush threw his authority in our faces, we ate it like starving children, but when Obama shows his humility and accepts responsibility for his mistakes in about the most gracious way I've ever seen any politician do, his credibility goes down the shitter?

I fear for the immediate future. I really do.

In My Day, Violence Was Violent *SPOILERS*

If you haven't seen the following movies and don't care for spoilers, this is a post better skipped: The Dark Knight, the original Star Wars trilogy, the original Indiana Jones trilogy, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King.

The other day, my mom surprised me by telling me that my favorite movie of 2008, The Dark Knight, had been selected by Christianity Today as one of the Ten Redeeming Movies of 2008. She explained that it was because Batman came off as a Christ-like character to them, and then she wondered about the redeeming qualities of showing a movie that violent to kids under the age of ten.

Which leads me to the gist of this entry: I said that The Dark Knight, while violent, isn't the most violent movie I have ever seen (that would be A Clockwork Orange). I also pointed out some of the movies she let me watch when I was really young, about five or six, that were incredibly violent for my age group: The original Star Wars trilogy and the first three Indiana Jones movies.

Wait just a second, Sarah, how were those movies more violent than The Dark Knight? Well, in TDK most of the violence is either implied or off-screen, and when it's not, it's much less graphic than almost any other movie of it's type I've ever seen. Even when the Joker pulls off his infamous "pencil trick" it happens so quickly that there isn't much time for you to be grossed out. And the most violent scene in the movie (for my money) happens later: When the Joker slashes Gamble's face and kills him. But all we see is the Joker putting the knife in Gamble's mouth and terrorizing him; the actual face-slashing takes place off-camera. There's very little, if any, blood and gore in this movie.

Which leads me to the violence in Star Wars:

In A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi cuts off the arm of a patron in the Mos Eisley cantina (after he attacked Luke, so nothing gratuitous), and not only do we see the unattached arm, we see the blood spilling out onto the floor. Grand Moff Tarkin blackmails Princess Leia into revealing the wherabouts of the rebel base by blowing up her home planet. Later, Obi-Wan is sliced in half by Darth Vader's lightsaber. While trying to destroy the Death Star, all of the pilots but Luke and Wedge are blown up. And goddamn it, Han shot first! I don't care what crisis of conscience George Lucas is having, Greedo did not shoot first and Han didn't shoot in self-defense. He did it because he is (as Harrison Ford said) "the greatest rapscallion in the universe."

When you get into The Empire Strikes Back, the Wampa ice monster gets his arm cut off, Luke almost freezes to death, sexual undertones galore between Han Solo and Leia, and let's not forget that Han and Leia are tortured just so Vader can trap Luke for the Emperor, and (keeping with the amputation theme, of course) Luke's hand gets sliced off.

In Return of the Jedi, Jabba the Hutt gets strangled by Leia (and shall we go into her slave outfit?). On Endor, the Ewoks intend to roast Han and Luke and eat them. Cute Jedi and handsome interstellar badass, yummy-yum-yum! Later on, Luke slices off Vader's hand and, after refusing to kill him, gets tortured and nearly killed by the Emperor's electric death-fingers.

And then there is the violence in the Indiana Jones movies. The pinnacle of violence in that series comes in Temple of Doom, where, ohai, someone gets his still-beating heart ripped out!!! I'm 20 years old and that scene still makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Or how about the guy that gets strangled by the ceiling fan? *shudder*

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, a man is shot in the back of his head and blood pours out of his mouth, several people are killed by several different means (including Indy shooting the sword-fighter, one of the funniest scenes in cinema history), and the Nazi bad guys are melted, exploded, and incinerated. Not to mention the extremely frightening (still!) transformation of the image of the Virgin Mary and the other ghosts that emerge from the Ark of the Covenant. Oh, and the guy who got run through with about a billion spikes, can't forget that.

The Last Crusade, which is possibly the least violent of all three movies, still shows people getting shot (most poigniantly, Dr. Jones towards the end), one guy getting crushed under a tank, and more than a few things being blown up.

And that's not the end of my rant against the sissification of movie violence, either. Even some of the Disney movies of my childhood were shockingly violent at the time: The Little Mermaid's nemesis gets stabbed with a ship. Beauty and the Beast not only shows the Beast getting stabbed, but shows him throwing Gaston to his death in a ravine. Aladdin nearly drowns and is just saved from being stabbed by his pet monkey biting the disgused Jafar on the wrist. And in a scene that made producer Don Bluth (his studio's movies include An American Tail and the gangster-esque All Dogs Go to Heaven) slam Disney's movies as being entirely too violent, The Lion King's Mufasa is thrown to his death in a stampede while Simba, the young heir to the throne, watches. Plus, we're talking about a movie where an adult (Scar) is trying to kill a young child (Simba) to have a clear path to the throne. But then again, if it didn't it wouldn't be a Disney take on Hamlet. This I accept. And let's not forget Rafiki taking on the hyenas: To this day, when I watch this movie (yes, I'm 20 and I still watch Disney movies, and goddamn it, I'm PROUD!) I cheer for him.

So... Are movies today more violent? I don't think so. Then again, I grew up in the generation that's supposed to be de-sensitized to all forms of violence, so my position could be a bit skewed.

Quoting the Quotables

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
~Terry Pratchett

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"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."
~Philip K. Dick

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"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
~Elie Wiesel

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"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
~Mark Twain

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"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
~Oscar Wilde

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"Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."
~Garrison Keillor

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"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
~Miss Piggy

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"I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
~Marilyn Monroe

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"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
~Cicero

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
~Dr. Seuss

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"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
~Albert Einstein

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"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
~Albert Camus

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"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
~Apple computer advertisement

Pushy Atheists are Not Good Atheists

I am an atheist. Shocking, isn't it? With all the defense I did about Christmas. Well, rest assured that while I may be an atheist, I'm not the pushy kind that demands that the word "holiday" be removed from all advertisements. I'm just a plain, old, not-believing, godless heathen.

I'll tell you how that came to pass, so sit back, relax, and grab whatever alcohol you have.

I was baptized in the Presbyterian church when I was a baby, probably in January or February 1989, and attended the church until I was six. When my mother left the church for the much more extreme Assemblies of God, I had started my first round of classes that would prepare me for being born-again. When I asked why later, I found out that my mother had left the church when she learned that one of the congregation's couples had aborted a baby they knew they couldn't afford... And the author of an article in our church's newspaper defended their decision.

(Or so she said. My mother has a rather skewed idea of what a "defense" for something like that could be. It might have been a light scolding, or a piece that was diplomatic in its handling of the subject, but my mother is militantly pro-life; anything short of stripping these people naked and stoning them in the street is letting them get away with murder, in her eyes. And yes, I have thought many times of tying her up and forcing her to hear George Carlin's wonderful "Pro-Life is Anti-Woman" diatribe, but I know she wouldn't listen.)

And when my mother became Assemblies of God, she went off the deep end. I mean, off the deep end from the 20-foot board. Head-over-heels, ass-over-teakettle, and she lost any power of reason she might have previously had. Suddenly, everything my brother and I wanted to do was "sinful": Trick-or-treating was verboten, because the church taught that the holiday was rooted in Satanic rituals. Pastor Bull¹ called for the Harry Potter books, among others that he found distasteful, to be banned because he'd heard they were teaching children witchcraft. Divorce for any reason was a sin, and single mothers were little more than welfare leeches raising freeway snipers.

That last statement, more than even the call for book banning or the ending of one of my favorite holidays, was the first turning point in my de-conversion. You see, my mother had divorced my father after living with his verbal abuse for eleven years, and was doing everything in her power to re-build our lives. She was often broke, often borrowed money from her parents, and to this day has bottom-feeders and collectors calling her about debts that are more than ten years old. Being a single mother is, I am convinced, the single most difficult job in the world, and I respect any woman who can do it. If I heard that sermon today, I would stand up and challenge it as loudly as I could, and not even after the service was over. When you start slamming single mothers, the gloves come off and the brass knuckles replace them. My mom might not have been perfect -hell, she might not have been good, even- but she was strong enough to leave an abusive marriage, and I will defend to the death any woman with that kind of strength. For that matter, I will defend single fathers with the same fervor. Single-parenting ain't easy, folks.

Then I read the "evil" Harry Potter books. I still believed in God, I still believed that Jesus had died on the cross to save the world, and even though I still think it would be completely awesome to wave a wand and shout "Scourgify!" instead of actually cleaning my room, I had no desire to learn witchcraft.

I still believe, however, that the church most damaged me by way of my sex education. "The Talk," for me, consisted of me asking my mom what sex was and her telling me "when a man sticks his penis in a woman's vagina." That wass it. No expansion, no definitions, nothing. I only realized, much later, how much harm that non-explanation could have caused me if I hadn't educated myself about sex. She never even told me what rape was, and by the time she offered that piddling excuse for a sex talk, I was 14, had C-cup breasts, and was getting unwanted looks from older men. The only time she thought I was in any danger was when a miscreant from her own singles' group gave me a look she didn't like. I was too ill-informed to know the difference. And of course, the Assemblies of God are nowhere near progressive enough to acknowledge that women who have been raped are victims of a violent crime. No, they fall on the old, misogynistic standby of "she was asking for it".

I would chalk it up to the fact that my mother is about the most squeamish person on the face of the earth (she is forever shocked at how frank I am when discussing my period, of all things), but any reasonable person would have given their child a decent explanation of sex. It went back to the teachings of the Assemblies of God: Talking to your kids, especially your daughters, about sex will make them so curious that they'll go out and lay the first thing that walks their way. Oh, and women shouldn't read bodice-rippers; they'll start getting ideas. The utter misogyny was one of the largest factors in my final de-conversion. I'm not a militant feminist, but I didn't have to be. I was a smart girl, and I felt distinctly patronized every time I listened to a sermon.

And the final, final, no-more-last-chances-you've-used-them-all straw came with 9/11. Every Sunday, the pastor would wax poetic on how evil all Muslims are and how part of their doctrine was to eliminate the western world and Christianity, even though just a few of them were twisting the Koran. I saw the hatred and hypocrisy more clearly than ever before. Later, while the pastor was blasting gays from his pulpit, I had it. I walked out of the sanctuary, crawled into my mom's car, and waited there for the next two hours while the sermon finished. I never went back to that, or any other type of church, again.

I had not read the whole Bible at that point, and I still haven't. I have seen how people have twisted and perverted it to suit their own, prejudiced desires, and knowing how often the stories have been handed down and translated and mis-translated, I'm almost afraid that what I could read is no different from what I've heard.

But I didn't become an atheist from there. I studied Judaism, Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Wicca. And always it was the same: I had to follow standards not because I thought I should, but because some invisible deity said I should. I should exclude others because they somehow didn't meet the standards set forth by that religion. And, the one thing I had always hated about Christianity above all else, I had to convert people.

Converting others is something I steadfastly refuse to take part in, ever. And even as an atheist I have been called upon to "de-convert" others, and I simply won't. (I can hear you all sighing and saying, "Finally! She's about to get to the point." Indeedy-do.)

This is why I have a problem with "positive" atheists, or, as I call them, "gung-ho atheists." It's one thing to say to someone, "I don't believe in a supreme being, and you haven't convinced me that I should." It's another, and unacceptable, thing entirely to tell that person, "I don't believe in God and you're an idiot for believing!" Why? Why is that person an idiot?

I don't think that everyone who believes does so out of some deficit or weakness. I don't think that all Christians are ignorant, Bible-thumping fanatics who believe that women should be their husband's uninformed fuck-puppets; in fact, I've met a number of Christians (including one of my best friends) who are all for women's rights and gender equality, and taught their children everything they would ever need to know about sex and how to protect themselves. My bad experiences with the church led me to believe the way I do, and far be it from me to call my experience universal.

I always hated the pushy aspect of Christianity. More than the censorship or misogyny or hypocrisy, I disliked that my faith was judged by the number of people I "brought to God" or at least witnessed to. And I tried; I really did. I witnessed to my friends, my enemies, my teachers, my dad, my grandparents, and even the cat and dog. But I've never been a good salesperson, and to this day I can count the number of people I converted on an amputee's fingers. I am perfectly okay with that. As I've gotten older and understood more about myself, I've realized that as much of a control freak as I am, I just can't find it anywhere in me to force people to believe the way I do.

But what I wonder is why are pushy atheists so goddamn pushy about their atheism? I thought we were anti-dogma; in fact, that's the very thing I've loved about being an atheist from Day One. If one of the deciding factors for all of us was the call to convert others, and we all came to the conclusion that we didn't like having our faith measured by how many of our friends we brought to church every Sunday... Why, for goodness sake, why are "positive" atheists allowed to get away with their nastiness? And worse, why do some of us encourage it? Aren't we supposed to be the reasonable, relaxed ones?

This isn't an issue of having our First Amendment rights taken from us, and if it was, I would make a call to everyone, atheist or theist, to stand and protest. But it is an issue of "this small faction of atheism is why atheists, as a whole, are the single most-hated group in the world." And while I can deal with being hated on my own, I can't bear to think of some of the nicest, smartest, most level-headed people I've come to know and care for deeply being hated for their choices because of a small, vocal, and ignorant few.

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¹For those of you who are curious: Yes, when I think of him now, I often call him "Pastor Bull(shit)". Because that's all the Assemblies of God doctrine is.

And no, someone who said that much crap about single mothers warrants absolutely none of my respect. I wouldn't even consider it. Actually, I take that back: I have considered it, and decided it wasn't worth the considering I was doing.