> For a guy who proudly claims to be monogamous and faithful to his wife, President George Bush sure seems to fuck (over) a lot of other women both in the US and abroad. In the US, he and his cronies are doing everything they can to ensure that women have worthless sex educations, limited birth control options, and almost no access to abortion. Abroad, the situation is even worse. By blocking $125 million of funding since 2002 to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), our “compassionate conservative” friends endanger the lives of millions of women and children by preventing them from receiving proper reproductive health care.

Want to tell Bush to go fuck himself instead of non-consenting women? Show him that Americans support sexual health here and around the world. To help women in the US pay for abortions, give to the National Network of Abortion Funds at http://www.nnaf.org/. For women who desperately need medical attention around the world, give to 34 million Friends of UNFPA, a program started in 2002 when Bush held the first $34 million in US funds back. Check them out at http://www.34millionfriends.org/.

Together, we can show our national leadership what compassion looks like.

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> Nearly two years ago, on April 25, 2004, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, Husband, and I boarded a bus near Lincoln Center at 6 am and began the short journey to Washington, DC to participate in the March for Women’s Lives. My cousin, who was 16 years old at the time, got into a car outside of Chicago, IL with four other teenagers and drove to DC to march as well. My aunt and uncle let her miss several days of school so that she could go. We were joined by people from every age group, every ethnic group, and every state in the country. It was the largest demonstration in Washington, DC ever. It was estimated that between 850,000 and 1.1 million attended. It was amazing.

Of course, there were counter-protestors with their propaganda and outright lies about abortion. At most, there were 200 hundred anti-women extremists who stood in little clumps along the march route and yell at us. We were called murders and perpetrators of genocide. We knew that they were wrong, and that by supporting access to legal and safe abortion, we actually save millions of lives of women (and often their families) each year.

Yet… every article about the March for Women’s Lives – a historic event, the biggest march in Washington ever – gave equal time to the anti-woman side as they did to the pro-woman’s lives side. That a march with a million people is given equal press as the protesters with less than 200 people encapsulates perfectly why the pro-women’s lives side is consistently losing these days. People hear the anti propaganda so often that they accept it as truth.

It is time to say no and demand to be treated fairly. It is time to remind people that being pro-choice is pro-life; that to be pro-choice is to save the lives of women. Say it to everyone you know, to everyone you meet, until our message is heard:

Pro-choice is the real pro-life.

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> I have a small button my backpack that says, “i’m not sorry.” My friend gave it to me last June at the annual conference of the National Network of Abortion Funds. I sport it with pride, and although I get a lot of quizzical looks, few people actually bother to ask me what it means.

My dentist is on of those few people. As was wrapping up my exam last week (I got an A+ – yay flossing and brushing regularly!), he noticed the button. “Interesting button,” he said. “What are you not sorry about?”

“Technically,” I explained to him, “this button means that I am not sorry that I had an abortion. However, I’ve never had an abortion, although I definitely would if I found myself pregnant, and I would absolutely not be sorry. But I wear this button in solidarity with those who had abortions and are not sorry that they have their own lives. I’m not sorry that about is legal, although I am very sorry that it is not affordable and accessible to every woman who needs one.”

My dentist laughed. “Well, that is certainly not what I expected you to say, but good for you! I wish everyone felt the same way.”

FACT: 89% of counties in the US do not have an abortion provider.

FACT: 6,000 women were forced to leave their homes and families in 2004 to travel to New York City to exercise their right to basic health care because their was no one in their hometowns who provided abortions.

FACT: The average cost of a hotel room in New York City is $300 per night and 85% of hotel rooms are booked over 200 days of the year, forcing low income women who travel to New York for an abortion to sleep on the street because they cannot afford a safe room.

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but while abortion is technically legal in all 50 states, thousands of women cannot exercise their right to an abortion because of unfair restrictions and/or a lack of providers.

If you would like to help a low income come forced to travel to NYC for a second trimester abortion, email the Haven Coalition at havencoalition@yahoo.com.

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>While I was in college, I developed a habit of sleeping with an insane amount of stuff on my bed. This was because I had the top bunk of an extremely high bunk bed that for reasons unknown to me had no ladder. The only way to get into my bed was to climb up the side of the metal frame. One side of the bunk was partly blocked by my desk, which was not good to climb on because I didn’t want to accidentally break my word processor. (Ah, the good old days!) The other side of the bunk was next to the window, which was scary because if I fell while climbing up, I’d go right through the window and plunge seven stories onto Fifth Avenue.

I didn’t make it any easier to get up when I dug up my My Little Pony tent bed (like the one at left, but decorated with My Little Pony) from home one vacation and brought it back to my dorm. When the tent sheet was on, I had to climb up the side of the bed and instead of flopping right onto the mattress, I had to swing forward and around to get into the fucking tent. (That thing rocked, though. I wonder what I did with it.)

Coming down from the bunk was also literally a pain. The bed was at least six feet high. I usually jumped down and landing was hard on the ankles, especially since I lived large and on the chubby side in those days. It was still better than climbing down by that fucking window, though. After one or two close calls, I had to completely abandon that method.

Since getting into and out of bed was such a production, any time I needed something, it was a major effort to get it. For example, if I got in bed to do some homework but forgot, say, a pencil, I had to go through the whole rigamorole of jumping down and climbing up. As a result, I kept as many supplies in my bed as I could. My bed had pens and pencils, paper, books, Kleenex, pajamas, extra socks, sweaters, Theo (teddy bear), etc. in it. The room had a built-in bookcase that ran up the wall and above the bed, which was convenient for text book storage at the bed level and also my alarm clock, which of course required an extension cord to plug in.

The only thing I didn’t keep up there was food and water. No water because I seem to have wandered through the first 22 years of my life in a state of perpetual dehydration, so it didn’t occur to me at the time to have a water bottle handy. I didn’t keep food up there because it was too gross to have crumbs and shit in the bed, and I wasn’t a total slob. I say total slob as opposed to slob because I didn’t change my sheets all that often. Can you imagine the farce involved when a five foot tall person attempts to put a sheet on a bed that is six feet up in the air? It was ridiculous. I could’ve broken my neck! Unfortunately, I then developed the bad habit of not changing the sheets too often as well as sleeping with lots of crap in the bed. Needless to say, Husband is not pleased.

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>As long as I’m on the Bush shitlist, I might as well point out that their plan to cure poverty and all social ills in the US by promoting marriage is fucking retarded. The idea behind it is that since a large proportion of single mothers live below the federal poverty line, if they just marry the first guy that comes along, all will be well. Instant wealth and stability in the household for the kiddies! Maybe in some cases marriage helps, but there is much proof that marrying any person with a dick actually makes the situation worse.

Exhibit 1: Recently a seven year old girl was tied to a chair and beaten to death by her stepfather. He justified his cruelty by explaining that the girl brought these beatings on herself by misbehaving, such as the time she cut her sister’s hair. He says he felt he needed to use all his strength to beat her so that she would learn a lesson. The fatal beating was precipitated after the girl ate a yogurt without asking and jammed the family printer. The stepfather had just lost his job, so money was tight and he really felt that his stepdaughter needed to understand that she couldn’t waste money by eating any time she wanted or by breaking things. Exhibit 1 illustrates that children are obviously not all better off when a single mother marries, and that marriage does not mean a family will not have money problems.

Exhibit 2: A very large percentage of the working poor are married couples with children. Usually both parents are in the workforce. So clearly, marriage does not mean that families do not struggle to pay for housing, food, health care, child care, and other life necessities. Exhibit 2 shows that there are more effective ways to spend public funds to reduce poverty.

Exhibit 3: A good number of “eligible” bachelors in many low income communities are in jail or have records, often for petty crimes. How the fuck is marrying someone who will have a hard time getting a decent paying job going to help lift families out of poverty? Exhibit 3 is proof that other policies would prevent the marriage as a panacea plan from working even if it wasn’t based on fucking stupid in the first place.

Perhaps a better way to solve poverty might be to offer health insurance, rent assistance, child care subsidies, and other social supports to working people with children instead of offering free marriage counseling. I know; I am such a crazy socialist liberal pinko commie porno feminist for thinking that way, but I just can’t ignore the evidence as conveniently as our “compassionate conservative” leaders can.

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>The big dick statue in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle in Manhattan reminded me of the greatest bench on which I ever had the pleasure of resting my ass. It was at an U-bahn station in a section of what was formerly East Berlin. The benches at the station were all artsy but one bench stood out, literally by a head. The special bench was carved to look like a man and woman sitting on a bench. Tired commuters waiting for the train could sit in their laps, as long as they didn’t mind leaning their backs on a set of conical tits on the woman side of the bench or having a long, fat penis poke their butts and legs on the man side of the bench. It was nothing you’d see in the States, that’s for sure. It was really fucking cool. (I’ll try to find my picture and scan it in.) I loved it.

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>The nice thing about completely crazy people who ride the New York City subway is that they say aloud the things I am thinking but do not actually say since I am not completely crazy.  This occurred to me on last night’s commute home when a mentally disturbed, but harmless, woman got on the train one stop after I did and sat down across from me.  She immediately began ranting about Bloomingdale’s and how it was evil and “shoves it to you.”  I totally agree with the sentiment.  I fucking hate that store.  Every time I go there I am ignored by the sales people and if I ask for help, I am treated rudely.  I assume it is because I am an average slob who definitely looks like I don’t belong there and won’t spend a lot of money on stupid designed crap (true), but my husband is a very respectable-looking guy who does look like he would spend a lot of money on nice things there, and for some reason, he also is treated like crap by staff there, so go figure.  Once I was there and buying a $98 pair of Liz Claiborne pants, a $60 blue merino wool cardigan (which I subsequently lost at the dry cleaners because I am a dumb fuck and didn’t give it to them separately from the matching shell, so they only checked it in as one piece and that is exactly what I got back, which sucked because it was an awesome sweater), and a matching merino wool shell, which I think was $45.  I only got all this shit because I had a gift certificate for $250 which someone gave us for a wedding gift, but people at Bloomingdale’s are assholes and refused to sell us any electronics that we actually wanted, so my husband said I should use it on myself.  (He’s the best!)  Anyhoo, the woman who checked me out was so super nice and friendly, I became suspicious that she was not really an employee.  Turns out she was new and hadn’t finished her training on how to become a haughty motherfucker yet.

Back to the crazy woman on the subway last night… As she was bellowing about Bloomingdale’s, the guy sitting next to me started laughing at her.  She stopped for a second to eye him over.  He was sitting the way that annoying men do where they have their legs spread out all over the place and take up more than one seat.  “What?” the crazy-but-wise woman said.  “Are your balls so big that they take up seats for five people?”  Ka-ching!  That is so one of my pet peeves, and she so nailed him!  I always want to call people out on it but since I am not crazy, I keep my mouth shut in fear of an unpleasant response involving a fist.  I was surprised that the guy turned bright red and actually sat up a bit.  Turns out that there really wasn’t enough room for another person next to him, though, so he began slouching and spreading again.  Still, I found the public shaming was quite effective.  The woman did too and noted that it wasn’t his fault that the “seats are made in Japan, and Japanese people’s asses are smaller than ours, but they think we are asses.”  Interesting point, I thought.

While I was hoping that she would not try and strike up a conversation with me as she watched me write down everything she was saying, I did have a newfound respect for completely crazy people on the subway.

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>Damn, talk about timing!  Just last night I wrote about ways in which people have found CUSS through search engines.  One of the things that surprised me when I investigated their searches is how few porn sites came up when someone typed in unshaved snatch without using quotes.  Even sand in her snatch brought up very few porn sites until I entered “sand in her snatch.”

Well, never ones to let people live their lives, our dear friends at the Bush administration delivered a subpoena to Google earlier today demanding that Google turn over all their search records.  Basically our fearless “defenders” of liberty (if you happen to be rich, and also male, they’ll defend your liberties no matter what how corrupt you are) who launched a war in Iraq to stop their production of weapons of mass destruction “spread democracy” (like it’s margarine or something) have decided that they want to see who is looking at porn.  They are trying to force Google to turn over the IP (internet protocol) address of every person who has done a search that led porn sites to appear.  I know that Bushies claim that they trust families to raise their kids and that government should not interfere in family matters, and blah, blah ,blah.  I guess they don’t trust your family because the pathetic reason Uncle George and his cabal of rightwing lunatics provide for this invasion of privacy and people’s right to access information is to root out porn sites that use deceptive words to lure kids to their pages.  You know, like they so effectively rooted out Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden.  Whatever.  

Sadly, I fear that anyone who looked up campaign for unshaved snatch with no quotes around the phrase will wind up in the clutches of our “freedom-loving” President.   Sorry about that.  I never meant for anyone to get investigated for reading some (hopefully) amusing commentary on social mores that I try and challenge.  And why do I also have a sneaking suspicion that searches on “birth control” or “abortion” will wind up in this fishing expedition for information on what Americans are up to?  I’m just paranoid, I suppose.  I mean, Bush and pals would never illegally spy on people who disagree with him.  Why would he crack down on feminazis, baby killers, and/or masturbators?  Silly little me to think that adults can read what they want in this “free” country.

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>I am so excited! I’ll be heading to California for work in early February, and my wonderful co-workers agreed that a quick stop at the Sierra Sacramento Valley Museum of Medical History would be a good way to relax in between presentations. There is almost nothing I love more than medical history museums, particularly when they are in English. (The last one I went to was in Zurich and the explanations were entirely in Swiss German, a language in which I understand essentially nothing. It was still an awesome museum, though. There were lots of gross and disturbing artifacts that didn’t need to be explained for the most part.)

The Sierra Sacramento Valley Museum of Medical History is small (only 1,200 square feet and the website claims it has room to grow) but has an exciting set of 16 display cases “featuring collections in the fields of Surgery, Clinical Diagnosis, Infectious Disease, Pharmacy, Radiology, Chinese Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Medical Quackery.” Medical quackery! Infectious diseases! Obstetrics and gynecology! These are my absolute favorites. Man, a work trip just can’t get better than this, I tell you. I am so lucky to work with people willing to humor my insane hobbies.

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>Yesterday I was inaccurately accused of having a vagina obsession on this very blog. While it is not untrue that I am obsessed with the cooch, I say it is inaccurate because I am obsessed with all types of things considered taboo about the human body, not just snatch. So when I met some people for dinner last night at an overpriced restaurant in the most useless and ridiculous upscale mall in America (that would be the Time Warner Center mall complex on Columbus Circle), I was quite taken with two ginormous statues – a nude man and a nude woman – in the lobby near the middle bank of escalators. I’m pretty used to naked female statues, as they seem to be everywhere; no big deal. It’s the naked dude that caught my eye. The sculptor didn’t gloss over the details – the giant statue had an appropriately big dick and sack. I wasn’t the only one, either. A young girl, maybe four years old, stood in awe, pointing at his crotch. It seems a lot of people have enjoyed Statue Guy’s company, as his penis was shiny from being rubbed. Unless it was shiny because he came alive after the mall closed, like in the movie Mannequin, and took care of business himself. (Hey, male statues have needs too!)

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