Thursday, May 29, 2008
There was a promo for Tyra Banks' talk show. Tomorrow we're going to find out "how to identify a fake purse".
Um, that's easy, isn't it? A purse is a baggish thing you can carry and put stuff in. If you can put stuff in something, and it's not too heavy, it's a purse. If you can't, like maybe it has no opening, or it's made out of ceramic, or it's solid metal, it's a fake purse.
Oh? That's not what they meant?
What they should have said is that tomorrow we'll find out how to tell whether you have been ripped off by a designer, or ripped off by an impostor. Like that matters.
Thud.
.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
1829 Rape and stuff ...
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Caught a few minutes of the Montel show this morning. Montel isn't looking good. It really does look like the pain is getting to him.
Anyway, the topic was child molestation, and his guests were women who had been molested by fathers or step-fathers. He said that 1 in 4 women will have been raped at some time in their lives. I don't know where he got that figure, but it seems to me like it should be higher. Much higher.
Of all the women friends I've talked with at an intimate level, about half say they were were molested to some degree as a child by a family member or close friend of the family. Of my four closest female family members and myself, all five of us were molested as children, by family members or neighbors. And by the time we realized it was wrong, or that we wouldn't be punished for telling, it's too late and there's no objective proof.
Almost all the women I know intimately have at one time or another as an adult been coerced into sex, to the point where it IS rape, but we didn't press charges because it wasn't stranger rape, it was date rape, and maybe we could have avoided it but it was safer and easier to acquiesce, because we felt guilty for things getting to that point, and therefore we know that there's no point in reporting it, because the only person who will be punished is ourselves. So instead, we believe the men who tell us it was our own fault, that we were "asking for it" (simply by existing, I guess), and we blame ourselves. Especially if we're young.
By the time I was in my mid-20s, they had beaten me down. I'd been forced and emotionally coerced and told it was my fault for "leading them on" so many times I was afraid of men, and I had no self-respect left. I thought it really was my fault. And back then, women and women's magazines didn't talk about it. It was a shameful topic. None of us knew that it was happening to anyone else. So we thought "It must be me. I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I AM bad, and they see that."
I think Montel's number, 1 in 4, is too low. That's probably what "they" know about. I think a lot more children are molested than anyone will ever know.
What the hell is it with men?
Things may be better now for adult women than they were when I was a young woman. Back then, men seemed to think they could get away with anything as far as women were concerned. Not so very long ago, wives were chattel. Men were literally allowed to beat their wives and children. I'm not blowing smoke. Through the late '50s and early '60s my brother and I tried everything to stop our father's abuse - we told police, teachers, doctors, neighbors, everyone - and they all just shrugged and told us to obey him and keep out of his way. The workers in the hospitals had to know where the injuries came from, but they never said or did anything. The term "domestic violence" hasn't been in common usage for very long. "Women's liberation" was REAL. Young women today have no idea what was accomplished, and it distresses me when I see them throwing it away.
Oh, well.
Re an Ex -
Q: Why on earth did you marry the guy knowing he was completely impotent?
A: I didn't know he was impotent. I thought he was the only man I'd ever met who respected me.
.
Caught a few minutes of the Montel show this morning. Montel isn't looking good. It really does look like the pain is getting to him.
Anyway, the topic was child molestation, and his guests were women who had been molested by fathers or step-fathers. He said that 1 in 4 women will have been raped at some time in their lives. I don't know where he got that figure, but it seems to me like it should be higher. Much higher.
Of all the women friends I've talked with at an intimate level, about half say they were were molested to some degree as a child by a family member or close friend of the family. Of my four closest female family members and myself, all five of us were molested as children, by family members or neighbors. And by the time we realized it was wrong, or that we wouldn't be punished for telling, it's too late and there's no objective proof.
Almost all the women I know intimately have at one time or another as an adult been coerced into sex, to the point where it IS rape, but we didn't press charges because it wasn't stranger rape, it was date rape, and maybe we could have avoided it but it was safer and easier to acquiesce, because we felt guilty for things getting to that point, and therefore we know that there's no point in reporting it, because the only person who will be punished is ourselves. So instead, we believe the men who tell us it was our own fault, that we were "asking for it" (simply by existing, I guess), and we blame ourselves. Especially if we're young.
By the time I was in my mid-20s, they had beaten me down. I'd been forced and emotionally coerced and told it was my fault for "leading them on" so many times I was afraid of men, and I had no self-respect left. I thought it really was my fault. And back then, women and women's magazines didn't talk about it. It was a shameful topic. None of us knew that it was happening to anyone else. So we thought "It must be me. I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I AM bad, and they see that."
I think Montel's number, 1 in 4, is too low. That's probably what "they" know about. I think a lot more children are molested than anyone will ever know.
What the hell is it with men?
Things may be better now for adult women than they were when I was a young woman. Back then, men seemed to think they could get away with anything as far as women were concerned. Not so very long ago, wives were chattel. Men were literally allowed to beat their wives and children. I'm not blowing smoke. Through the late '50s and early '60s my brother and I tried everything to stop our father's abuse - we told police, teachers, doctors, neighbors, everyone - and they all just shrugged and told us to obey him and keep out of his way. The workers in the hospitals had to know where the injuries came from, but they never said or did anything. The term "domestic violence" hasn't been in common usage for very long. "Women's liberation" was REAL. Young women today have no idea what was accomplished, and it distresses me when I see them throwing it away.
Oh, well.
Re an Ex -
Q: Why on earth did you marry the guy knowing he was completely impotent?
A: I didn't know he was impotent. I thought he was the only man I'd ever met who respected me.
.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
1828 Thud
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
"Wife Swap" was on earlier this evening. I walked past the kitchen TV in time to see one of the wives described as a health nut, and it showed her making a "green drink" that she requires her children to drink every day. I saw her cutting rhubarb in the garden, chopping up the rhubarb leaves, and stuffing them into a blender to make the drink. Health nut? Rhubarb LEAVES?
Wikipedia: "Rhubarb leaves contain poisonous substances. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, a corrosive and nephrotoxic acid that is present in many plants. The LD50 (median lethal dose) for pure oxalic acid is predicted to be about 375 mg/kg body weight,[citation needed] or about 25 g for a 65 kg (~140 lb) human. While the oxalic acid content of rhubarb leaves can vary, a typical value is about 0.5%,[7] so a rather unlikely five kilograms of the extremely sour leaves would have to be consumed to reach an LD50 dose of oxalic acid. However, the leaves are believed to also contain an additional, unidentified toxin.[8] In the petioles, the amount of oxalic acid is much lower, only about 2-2.5% of the total acidity[9], especially when harvested before mid-June (in the northern hemisphere), but it is still enough to cause slightly rough teeth."
Ok, 11 pounds to kill a 140 lb person. But I imagine a few ounces every day for a child can't be good for them, or their kidneys. It's not one of those things where a lot is bad but a little is good, like, say, aspirin.
Thud.
.
"Wife Swap" was on earlier this evening. I walked past the kitchen TV in time to see one of the wives described as a health nut, and it showed her making a "green drink" that she requires her children to drink every day. I saw her cutting rhubarb in the garden, chopping up the rhubarb leaves, and stuffing them into a blender to make the drink. Health nut? Rhubarb LEAVES?
Wikipedia: "Rhubarb leaves contain poisonous substances. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, a corrosive and nephrotoxic acid that is present in many plants. The LD50 (median lethal dose) for pure oxalic acid is predicted to be about 375 mg/kg body weight,[citation needed] or about 25 g for a 65 kg (~140 lb) human. While the oxalic acid content of rhubarb leaves can vary, a typical value is about 0.5%,[7] so a rather unlikely five kilograms of the extremely sour leaves would have to be consumed to reach an LD50 dose of oxalic acid. However, the leaves are believed to also contain an additional, unidentified toxin.[8] In the petioles, the amount of oxalic acid is much lower, only about 2-2.5% of the total acidity[9], especially when harvested before mid-June (in the northern hemisphere), but it is still enough to cause slightly rough teeth."
Ok, 11 pounds to kill a 140 lb person. But I imagine a few ounces every day for a child can't be good for them, or their kidneys. It's not one of those things where a lot is bad but a little is good, like, say, aspirin.
Thud.
.
1827 Home and Catching Up
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
I left home Saturday morning, and got home about 11 pm, last night. I should be tired, but I'm not.
I met the Man in NJ on Saturday, and we drove another 7 hours or so to a southern city, where he had a tournament on Sunday.
We had planned to go out after checking in on Saturday, but we found that there was a major festival going on, and our bay-side hotel was smack in the middle of it. Streets barricaded, bumper-to-bumper traffic, impossible parking, dense crowds on the sidewalks. Saturday night was apparently a big hip-hop concert, and after noting that half the males on the street were wearing plain white T-shirts with baggy black pants and half the females looked like hookers, he decided we weren't going out on those streets that evening. (Yeah, ok, that's the drug dealer uniform, but that doesn't mean EVERYBODY in black and white is a dealer.) And we couldn't go anywhere else, either, because it took like a half hour to go the last three blocks to the hotel, and we didn't want to go through that hassle twice more.
Damn if I can remember what we did do. Seriously. I do remember that it was a nice evening. Probably talked a lot. We talk a lot, and it's always enjoyable.
Sunday we went to the tournament, and then Sunday night the streets were still crowded, but it was a churchy crowd - something big going on in the church across the street - so it was ok. We had dinner at his favorite restaurant (I cut my steak with my fork and the asparagus was incredible), and then went to a huge arcade, where we raced our horses.
Yeah, raced horses. There's an arcade game called "Derby Owner's Club". You breed your own foal, feed it, train it, gain its confidence, keep it happy, and race it against computer generated horses and other players' horses on a wide screen. I've got a really good horse, a gray male sired by one of the Man's horses out of a computer dam. He's still young, but almost always comes in second (to the Man's horse, of course) and once we even beat him! By a nose, but hey! That race was long and so exciting that another couple who also had horses in the race were cheering on MY horse! He got a lot of praise and a big bunch of bananas for dinner after that race.
Monday we started home. The seven hour drive took 12 hours, because the major highways were parking lots. The Man kept getting frustrated, leaving the highway to try to find a less crowded parallel path. We wandered around a lot. Got back to northern NJ at nearly midnight. I wasn't as tired as he was, because I wasn't driving, and was able to wiggle around in my seat, but he was concerned about my driving the last 1.75 hours to my home, so we ended up staying in NJ.
Tuesday morning, he went to work and I went to visit Daughter, introduced Clyde to them, spent the day there, and got home at 11 pm.
Today I spent catching up on mail, and nursing a sunburn (two days in a convertible will do that to you), and walking a bit to make up for all the sitting over the weekend. My mailbox (the one at the end of the driveway) was packed so full the mail lady had tied the door closed, and both email in-boxes were choking.
.
I left home Saturday morning, and got home about 11 pm, last night. I should be tired, but I'm not.
I met the Man in NJ on Saturday, and we drove another 7 hours or so to a southern city, where he had a tournament on Sunday.
We had planned to go out after checking in on Saturday, but we found that there was a major festival going on, and our bay-side hotel was smack in the middle of it. Streets barricaded, bumper-to-bumper traffic, impossible parking, dense crowds on the sidewalks. Saturday night was apparently a big hip-hop concert, and after noting that half the males on the street were wearing plain white T-shirts with baggy black pants and half the females looked like hookers, he decided we weren't going out on those streets that evening. (Yeah, ok, that's the drug dealer uniform, but that doesn't mean EVERYBODY in black and white is a dealer.) And we couldn't go anywhere else, either, because it took like a half hour to go the last three blocks to the hotel, and we didn't want to go through that hassle twice more.
Damn if I can remember what we did do. Seriously. I do remember that it was a nice evening. Probably talked a lot. We talk a lot, and it's always enjoyable.
Sunday we went to the tournament, and then Sunday night the streets were still crowded, but it was a churchy crowd - something big going on in the church across the street - so it was ok. We had dinner at his favorite restaurant (I cut my steak with my fork and the asparagus was incredible), and then went to a huge arcade, where we raced our horses.
Yeah, raced horses. There's an arcade game called "Derby Owner's Club". You breed your own foal, feed it, train it, gain its confidence, keep it happy, and race it against computer generated horses and other players' horses on a wide screen. I've got a really good horse, a gray male sired by one of the Man's horses out of a computer dam. He's still young, but almost always comes in second (to the Man's horse, of course) and once we even beat him! By a nose, but hey! That race was long and so exciting that another couple who also had horses in the race were cheering on MY horse! He got a lot of praise and a big bunch of bananas for dinner after that race.
Monday we started home. The seven hour drive took 12 hours, because the major highways were parking lots. The Man kept getting frustrated, leaving the highway to try to find a less crowded parallel path. We wandered around a lot. Got back to northern NJ at nearly midnight. I wasn't as tired as he was, because I wasn't driving, and was able to wiggle around in my seat, but he was concerned about my driving the last 1.75 hours to my home, so we ended up staying in NJ.
Tuesday morning, he went to work and I went to visit Daughter, introduced Clyde to them, spent the day there, and got home at 11 pm.
Today I spent catching up on mail, and nursing a sunburn (two days in a convertible will do that to you), and walking a bit to make up for all the sitting over the weekend. My mailbox (the one at the end of the driveway) was packed so full the mail lady had tied the door closed, and both email in-boxes were choking.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)