A Dab Here

Pillow alcove and instrument collection. The window seat is lovely in the summer when you can open the skylight and lean your head back on the roof.

My desk and hobby paraphernalia. Before you wonder, the jars contain paint thinner and water, not urine.

The Giant Shelf. The vacuum cleaner box contains my landlord's non-functioning drag-behind model. The box is to the one Boy and I bought a few months ago which is an absolute powerhouse. And yes, Boy has more audio equipment than I can fathom a use for.


Room 3 of 7 (plus the stairwell) is now painted. The study was the first carpeted room, which added a bit of challenge, as well as the first one that had its ceiling refreshed. (As the room is mostly ceiling it seemed like a good idea.) The study also contains 2 of the 4 light fixtures I've replaced in this house, evidenced by the fact that you can't see a bare lightbulb on the ceiling or a broken fixture in the stairwell.

I listened to a recording of Pride and Prejudice, read for LibriVox by Karen Savage, for this room. As I stood on desks and chairs, covered my tattered jeans in paint, and bent myself into rather strange angles to reach all the nooks and crannies in this room I wondered just how quickly Mrs. Bennett would faint at the sight of me. Lydia and Kitty would certainly point and laugh, Mary and Jane would quietly disapprove, and Lady Catherine would slap me for disgracing myself, but I think Lizzie would probably give me a clandestine thumbs-up.

The ceiling in this room is only about 7' high so I only needed a desk chair to reach everywhere. The room is mostly edges and corners so I spent quite a long time staring cross-eyed at my flat artist's brush trying to smooth the ragged lines left by the masking tape. I had to patch about twenty holes in the ceiling before painting, and a few unfortunately need another coat of emulsion. Never trust spackle manufacturers' claims that their product does not drink paint!

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Bathroom door and card catalogue. 'Cos, you know, we need to index things in here. I know it's a bit blurry but it's dismal out and the flash screws up the colour.

New taps I installed before my family got here for graduation. I think it's a hospitable gesture to ensure your guests can turn the water both on And off.

Our Floor-Soak Plus shower door, along with the airing cupboard doors I took a few liberties with. I selected the wall colour from the design on the tiles. I couldn't not, really. Thankfully it was featured in the Wickes "Landlord Chic" line, so I was able to get a good price on a water-durable formula.


The bathroom, paint job 2. I didn't really mean to paint this one as soon or as quickly as I did--I sorta launched into it at about 11pm the day we went to the hardware store and was mostly done about a day and a half later. The shade of yellow you see is actually indistinguishable from worn-out white under incandescent and compact fluorescent lighting, and unfortunately, England's natural lighting tends to leave something to be desired, so it took another week of tweaking at different times of day to get all the holidays filled.

The soundtrack to this room was Jane Eyre, also courtesy of a team of LibriVox volunteers, so I think I got more annoyed at the cracks in the walls than I probably should have. I nearly painted the doorframe yellow while yelling "come on Charlotte, don't be ridiculous--no sane 19th century waif would think God wanted her to volunteer in India!" Still, my fury with the book did keep me motivated.

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The kitchen is down a few steps from the dining room, something I've never quite understood. Next door's kitchen is the same. The pantry is behind the kitchen door, too, so you have to waste time and effort waving both doors around in order to get anything out of there. I've considered taking the kitchen door off, but where would I store it? (If I ever find a place, I'm putting our crappy mattress in there too and getting a new one.)

Dining room seek-and-find! Do you see: 1 fedora? 2 computers? 3 glasses cases? 4 marine animals? The number 5? (Why do we keep our fiction library in the dining room, you ask? The bookshelves in the living room are for non-fiction, serials, and CDs, of course.)

The same room, the same paint, but without flash. This colour is very fun for that--it's completely dependant on the lighting. Sometimes it's red, sometimes it's orange, sometimes it's almost pink. Heart. We nicked the lanterns from my sister's wedding.


This was the first room I decided to paint, mostly because I kinda messed it up and needed to fix it. Some owner of the house many moons ago put an ugly-as-sin paper border up at chair-rail level, and some later, lazier owner elected to, rather than remove it, paint an attractive puke green over it. Later still someone painted over that with a sherbet pink, which was then covered with four or five coats of everyone's favourite Chunky White. This all happened, of course, years after someone hung the Decorative Lumps wallpaper that eventually became a structural element of the house. I couldn't do much about the lumpy walls, but the peeling, glaringly moronic painted border was downright nauseating. What can I say? I'm impulsive. I picked at it. Quite a bit. By the end of an hour I had a razor blade, a sponge and a bowl of water out and was carefully removing the ghastly thing from the entire room...which of course left me suddenly needing to paint. Whoops.

Charlaine Harris kept me company on this room with several Sookie Stackhouse novels, read by Johanna Parker. The whole scrubbing, patching, and painting process took about a week, and I typically listened through one book a day. If it weren't for all the gratuitous sex scenes the stories would belong firmly in the Early Teen section of the library--the characters are so simple and stupid it almost hurts. Every chapter includes at least two highly-detailed paragraphs of how Sookie gets dressed or what she's wearing, down to the last yellow ball earring. Still, Parker has an amazingly comforting southern accent (and does all the voices really well--when she reads phrases like 'Suddenly, out of the dark I heard,"I knew you'd be here, silly girl." It was exactly the voice I was dreading.' you can easily tell which character it is long before they're identified), and Harris always includes references to local food, customs, history, and behaviours that get me all nostalgic. That's not fair, Sookie, I can't get pickled okra here!

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Gross words: Formula. Premium. Deluxe. Nugget.

Undirected Impatience

As of two days ago I'm officially in limbo. My student visa has expired, but UKBA still has my passport and my post-study work visa application is "processing" (e.g. collecting dust in a locked filing cabinet shoved in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard.") I submitted my form just under 10 weeks ago, but they say they are currently reviewing applications submitted 3 weeks ago. Without my passport and a valid visa of some persuasion I have no evidence of my right to work in this country. I also have no idea if I have, or will have the right to work in this country. They have changed the application criteria but will not attempt to impose them retroactively, so at least I have that.

Since November I've painted two rooms of my house (both including baseboards and trim, one including ceiling), volunteered on 4 shows, graduated, fixed a silly little computer, installed new taps in the bathroom, applied for 10 jobs (just for fun, really) been rejected from 3 jobs (no surprise there, Ms. Dubious Work Visa), had some work done on the house, doodled a lot, fixed and made a few pieces of jewellery, and spent the rest of my time reading, staring at the wall, and kicking things. I've also tried to encourage my neighbours' cats to let me pet them when they play in my back yard (so far...no) and cleaned everything far too thoroughly. In short, if it weren't for the fact that I've been alone, I've been behaving like I'm on vacation. Except without the fun or the relief.

Two days ago a Royal Mail special delivery guy parked his van right in front of my house. He withdrew about a dozen small parcels from the back, checked his list...and then proceeded to efficiently deliver them all to twelve houses near mine before driving away. I was incensed. Wait a minute, Mr. Postman! Surely you see this is not fair! Jerkface.

Worried worried worried. I bet my passport made its way onto the black market and is currently being used by a Ukranian drug mule. My application is not remarkable, so why is it taking the same amount of time as the really complicated, distinctly dubious ones? Y'know, like the application submitted in Swahili for a completer of Oxford Street Unn-Iveristy so she may immigrate with her 9 children who are all men and older than her. Is Central really that unheard of? Laurence Olivier went there. As did Dame Judi Dench, all of the Redgraves, and Catherine Tate. It's not some mob-run diploma mill! What's wrong with my credentials? Why am I on the back burner? Did you find traces of LSD on the envelope? What else are post office employees supposed to do all day?

Erm..

sorry.

It's been too long for me to feel comfortable or safe. But I accidentally painted the cabinet that contains my suitcase shut and I'm not sure if I'll ever get it open again. Maybe it'll be fine. Maybe it really did fall down behind a cupboard, or Daisy Mae spilled her coffee on it and they've had to ask the US embassy to print me a new passport.

Yeah right. They'd totally make me pay for that.

Interesting Changes at UKBA

So UKBA's website has undergone some heavy information updates in the past month, changes which would invalidate my application if they were retroactive. For sanity's sake I can't believe they would try it, as I submitted my form a month before they told anybody anything about them, but the office trying to learn the new criteria and evaluate applications differently based on their submission date could delay things. I'm trying to keep a cool head. I still have 8 of 10 fingernails.

As of December 22, everyone who is applying for Tier 1 and Tier 4 visas must have a biometric residence permit. This is a big change, as when I applied for my Tier 4 (Student) in 2009 I was told not only that I should not apply for one, but that I couldn't have one. Moreover, only Tier 1 (General) applications needed one at the time, and my application is under Tier 1 (Post-Study Work), a completely different form and set of criteria. I mentioned a few posts back that there was a weird confusing page on the application regarding BRPs, and now I see why.

I've read news that UKBA seeks to do away with the post-study work visa, which exists to provide a route to work for non-EU graduates, but that they haven't done so quite yet. One of their representatives was quoted recently saying "The fact that you've taken a class here does not give you the right to settle here" which makes me feel all warm and cozy. The message to graduates is clear: we want your obscenely-inflated tuition fees. We don't want you. I feel used.

The thing that really irks me about this is that it is pathetically inconsistent. A high school dropout from Poland who speaks no English and only understands the rudiments of lawnmowing has more of a right to be here than a native English speaking American with a Master's degree. Under current laws no one from the EU has to do anything at all to get a legal job, settle his or her family and put the kids in school, or even claim unemployment benefits in the UK, but Americans who paid for the right to even apply to be here, were subjected to intense scrutiny and prodding as to the validity of their identities and courses, paid extortionate tuition fees contrasted with their EU classmates, worked hard to earn a high qualification, and clearly had to be able to afford to fly here 'cos we sure as hell couldn't pack grandma in the Chevy and drive across the Atlantic are told clearly and flatly, "get out."

I know there are jerks out there who make up phony universities to provide an entry route to otherwise-unqualified migrants who just want to loaf around here. I realize that every country has its fill of useless freeloaders and shouldn't be obligated to take on other countries' bums. I know the standard of living is pretty attractive here, but the country can't afford to pay for every Joe Blow to mooch off its socialized services. I'm not that obtuse.

But eliminating the Post-Study Work Visa won't help you whittle down the number of bums who wind up here. Indeed, the whole reason the visa programme was developed was to ensure that only useful, qualified graduates could stay. I had to provide detailed letters from my school to prove I'd earned a real MA from a real, accredited university while here on a valid student visa. If a certificate of completion from Joe's Diploma Mill is making the cut it is a sign that you need to perform some internal corruption sweeps, not take away career opportunities from the highly-educated graduates your business community needs and your internal revenue service would appreciate. There are probably some highly-educated foreign graduates of British universities who could help you make them.

I'm not going to try and tell anyone what their laws should be, but I do believe the laws a country creates must be enforced fairly. If I'm not welcome, then Piotr shouldn't be either.

BBC rejection letter

Ha! I just got a tersely-phrased automated rejection letter from the BBC for a gig I applied to in September. I figured that had happened about two months ago. Good to know Auntie is upholding her reputation for punctuality and efficiency.

I actually received an email about this in mid-December letting me know the short-listing process for the gig had been delayed due to schnumaya-hummana, and they would let me know something shortly. This letter described my reason for rejection similarly as schnumaya-hummana, or "we regret we are unable to provide more detailed feedback at this stage, but please apply again to another suitable role." It even provided a link to other jobs that could reject me based on my immigrant status.

Well hey, maybe this is a sign--not that my visa application will be accepted necessarily, but that pencil-pushers in the UK are finally back at their desks.

analytics, part 2

I recently remembered I had a google analytics account. I tend to forget and leave it quietly ticking away to itself for months on end--partly because very few people read my writing, and partly because I still don't really understand what half of its data means. I check in, check that the usual states and countries have lit up, smile to myself, then log out and ignore it for another quarter. If I were trying to make money or promote something aside from my currently-useless résumé perhaps I would pay closer attention to it, but for now and for my needs it's little more than a nifty piece of technology.

There is something delightful, though, about clicking through the maps and playing "guess which friend read this month" based on the cities their IPs are routed through. Some are easy, some are bizarre. I tend to get a lot of accidental pageviews from India and former Soviet states, and my "motivated self-starter" posting from three years ago is actually the top entry if you Google the phrase. (I wonder how many HR recruiters stumble across That in an average month.) But the little orange dots over my friends' and family's towns generally account for the lengthiest site visits, a fact that both fills me with a funny sentimental pride and keeps me on my guard about writing anything too obnoxious or controversial. Based on the US data set I don't think my grandmother knows my URL, which can only be a good thing. It is amusingly helpful that everyone I know lives in different states. As long as Arkansas stays blank I think I'm safe (unless it's routed through Honolulu, or grandma secretly gets my postings printed off in Georgia and has them mailed to her.) None of my really controversial, deranged-sounding sentiments ever make it out of my living room, which is probably why I'm still employable.

The whole point I guess I can't avoid making is that I know at least someone is reading, but comments are rare. If you formulate an opinion about what I write, even if it's "damn you stupid" or "wow, that's offensive" please let me know. I'm slowly losing my mind worrying and waiting for UKBA to let me stay in England (they're trying to do away with the type of visa I qualify under--something I'm completely helpless against) and the opportunity to get into a heated, research-driven debate with someone over an inconsistency, prejudice, or other shortcoming in my discourse would do wonders to distract me from my current hand-wringing.

Speaking of which, I found out this weekend that a bat-shaped puppet Boy and I gave to his mother for her birthday has been introduced to her first graders as Ukba, winged guardian of the British Isles (may he grant asylum to the meek and cast out law-evaders with his golden trident). As many of her students' families are from overseas she restrained herself from adding "and if you're naughty, he'll send you home!" but she came close. That made my day.

Y'know what's cool? Compasses.

I've been doodling a bit while waiting for my work visa application to process so I can apply for a National Insurance number so I can apply for a job. (I've also been reading and listening to many books, and cleaning my house, and when it's not raining, just wandering around.) I've always enjoyed rose windows, so it didn't come as a shock to discover that I also enjoy crop circles and take delight in figuring out how they're made. I'm not a maths whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but I do fancy a good pattern.

Also, this is my 350th posting on this blog. (I have 45 on my other blog but they're not nearly so angry or full of bile as this one.) Woo! It only took me 4 and half years.

Lire et Repondre

A response to This which is itself a response to This but neither seem to bother referring to This:

The issue the folks over at Uncommon Descent fail to recognize, and a fact the folks over at Pharyngula have failed to bother mentioning, is that one's views on theology are irrelevant to this debate. Neither theism nor atheism nor anything in between have any impact on one's views regarding his or her own species. Indeed, some atheists are certainly more protective of their species than many religious people, just as some religious people can justify their value for progeny without any regard for their sacred texts. The issues are neither mutual nor exclusive.

What Might affect one's answers to the questions, however, are other, lighter -isms--I'll be focusing on humanism, anarchism, pragmatism, and capitalism, which I think are practiced by athe- and the-ists in roughly equal proportions. These -isms are a level closer to one's daily life than the great question of Where the Universe Came From. The moral codes upheld by each different group will provide clearly different answers to the questions. (For the sake of this discussion, the term Moral will be used in its purest form--adherence to the rules, bylaws, or expectations of a particular institution.)

Without further ado: the answers to the questions according to different philosophical sub-groupings, assuming the person answering is an atheist or religion-neutral. Answer set 1. Humanists.

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Yes.

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? Yes.

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? Rights are codes of conduct established by human cultures to ensure that everyone has a fair shot at happiness, so if we affirm that the baby is human and we acknowledge our society's codes, the codes apply to it. Yes.

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? The survival of our species is our responsibility and no one else's. If we want our species to continue to exist, we must ensure the next generation is born and raised to fend for itself.

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? Yes. Rightness and wrongness in terms of the species are absolute. We must responsibly maintain and promote the survival and happiness of everyone in our species who is beneficial to it.

Answer set 2: Anarchists.

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Yes, but so's the Unabomber. The fact that they contain a full set of homo sapiens sapiens genes doesn't mean anything about them.

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? If they can't think for themselves, no. Person-hood is awareness.

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? No one has an inherent right to anything. It is of course arguable that since no-one has the right to live, no one has any more right than anyone else to live, but it doesn't mean the beginning of life is special or should be protected. If the baby's parents want to keep it alive, that's their concern.

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? Again, they have no more or less right to live than any other living thing. I don't have the right to kill it, but it doesn't have the right to be alive.

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? Rightness and wrongess are social constructs intended for the training and control of children. Thinking individuals must determine what is best for themselves--no set of codes or absolutes should dissuade them. It is not up to me to decide how you live or think. If it is best in your situation to do away with an adult or a child, that is your concern. Only when the person in question is me or someone who I'd rather keep alive does it become my problem. The total human population size is thoroughly irrelevant.

Answer set 3: Pragmatists.

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Yes, it has the same genetic sequence as adult humans.

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? A person is a thinking, productive member of society, so no.

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? Babies of course have potential value--as workers, thinkers, and functional members of society--but none of that is actualized. Until the child has begun to exhibit some cognitive and physical function with which it can provide for itself or others it actually has negative value. It occupies the attention and energy of others (its parents, teachers, babysitters, and the like), it consumes food and requires heating, space, and shelter, which require energy to produce, and yet it does not contribute to its society in return. We of course assume that at some point in its future that it will begin to make this contribution, but we have no guarantee that this will be so. As long as its value is not calculable, it is impossible to determine if the child has any.

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? It depends on the actual value of the baby in question. Since that cannot be determined, and because all newborns have equal potential to be useful or detrimental to society one cannot decide if their lives should be preserved in any absolute terms.

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? Not as wrong as killing an adult whose usefulness or benefit to the species is greater than their consumption, but more wrong than killing an adult who causes damage to the species or consumes more than they produce. Either way, much more time and energy has gone into creating the adult than the infant, so it is less of a waste of time and work to lose an infant than a functioning, useful adult. Though after an adult has outlived his usefulness, he is functionally worth less than the infant, for his lifetime energy consumption exceeds his current productiveness, whereas the infant's energy consumption and output are both low.

Answer set 4: capitalists.

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Irrelevant--people buy accessories for their cars and treats for their dogs. You do not need to be fully human to be a part of our economy. We have machines that budget for and buy accessories for other machines--in my view they are just as human as a homo sapiens who does the same task.

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? Person-hood is directly related to one's contribution to the economy, so as long as its needs contribute to the economy, yes. It may not be doing the purchasing, but money must be spent on its behalf, which means extra money must be earned by an adult or caretaker than the adult would need on his or her own. Even in utero the baby is a person, provided its pre-natal care is paid for with insurance or out of pocket.

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? Depends who's paying. If the parents' insurance premiums are paid up and the birth doesn't require extra money on the behalf of the state or the citizenry, the baby owes its life to its parents and it is their right to decide if it deserves it. If the parents depend on welfare or expect the hospital to eat the cost, the child owes its life to the generosity of its community and it should be their right to decide if it deserves it.

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? Again, it's a matter of cost/benefit ratio. These days keeping them alive requires more money than the alternative, but this was not always so, nor is it so in some cultures. If the child in question is considered a commodity, do you believe it will sell for more than the net cost of feeding and clothing it while in your possession? Or if you don't intend to sell it, what is the cost of educating it, contrasted with the purchasing power that education may lead to? If more money is likely to be spent on it than it will likely earn for itself or you, then no.

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? An adult who is current on his mortgage, working 40 hours a week at $20/hr or higher, paying off his student loans at at least 8.5% interest, has at least one car loan in good standing and has spent at least $15,000 cash for a wedding has far more value than a normal baby who has cost at most $15,000 in extra food for its mother, pre-natal care and delivery. If the child is unwell but the parents have cash in hand for just such an incident it may be worth the same as a starter home, which is good for the hospital, but still not the same value as a fully-functioning worker. Indeed, if the pregnancy has removed the child's mother from the workforce for any length of time then the child on whose behalf leave was taken has negative value to the mother's employer, particularly if she qualifies for paid maternity leave. After ten years of life a typical child generally has consumed revenue equal to the value of one pre-owned boat or the employment of 3 college graduates for two years. That said, if the child was produced using in-vitro fertilization or another atypical method then by the time of birth their net value may be equal to or higher than a ten year old, particularly if the parents required more than three cycles for it to take. Though then that does bring into question the value of the individual live birth against the pricey but ultimately non-viable embryos(...) no.

Answer set 5: Me.

PZ Myers never said anything about newborn babies' right to life. He just said they weren't people. They aren't--they're genetically human, but they don't think, evaluate, or even have personalities for quite some time after they're born. At three weeks of age a kitten has a more distinct personality than a three-month old human, but this does not mean that the kitten will ever become a person, or the baby will ever become a cat. As soon as the baby's comprehension extends beyond the flavour of its toes it will embark upon the long, difficult transition into person-hood (something I would argue doesn't really set in until around age 22).

Rights are in fact a social construct intended to ensure that laws are enforced equally across all sectors, though this rarely occurs. People's rights, adult and child, are infringed upon constantly. My right to pursue happiness as I see fit is often infringed upon by other people's pursuit of the same thing--and indeed, this is not only unavoidable, but necessary. Rights are an abstraction, and a fairly loose one at that. We may safely state that rights are endowed by the state and may be taken away at any time by the state because let's face it, the truth of 'rights' extends just as far as the truth of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'--e.g. just as far as you can suspend your disbelief. (Riiiiight. No no, the people are in charge. And the ongoing war effort demanded, maintained, and prevented from ending by Haliburton? Fully backed by the people.)

Point is, one's relationship with religion does not directly impact his or her relationship with government, humanity, or even the planet. Jumping to the conclusion that all atheists think alike is the kind of simple-minded knee jerk reaction you'd expect out of a god-botherer.

(see what I did there? it's funny! Because I made myself look like a knee-j...oh, you got it. Sorry.)

Come on, BBC

UPDATE 9/01/11: Thank you, Ben Goldacre, for your ability to talk to the right people and find the right numbers. The real story: 584 failures out of 1.355 Million users.

Almost exactly TRIPLE the number in 2005, which I cited as a conservative estimate in any case.

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I just read THIS shock-and-alarm article.

Part 1. Understanding Statistics.

Yeah, did you read the whole thing? 584 unintended pregnancies...out of the entire user base...in 11 years.

Eleven years.

Implanon contraceptive devices have demonstrated a failure rate of .05% in clinical trials. 1 in 2000 users may become pregnant. 14 women involved in a lawsuit cited in the above article hadn't even been wearing one--their doctors missed, and nobody noticed. Human error happens--when I got an IUD it took 3 tries--3 IUDs--to get one to fit because I stupidly consented to letting a supervised trainee insert it. (Oh the unimaginable agony. Seriously. Still makes me flinch, and that was three years ago. I don't know how any woman would consent to giving birth, let alone more than once.) So of the 584 failures, probably about 5% had nothing to do with the device at all. It was human error compounded with negligence, exhaustion, or poor eyesight.

The article does not mention the whole number of implant users over the past 11 years, just mentions that it is popular. So I've been looking it up. The NHS National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reported that, as of 2005, 3% of women age 16-49 were using an implant, and the only one licensed for use in the UK is Implanon. (helpful) So. I asked the department of statistics what those deets were--14 million women were aged between 16 and 49 as of the 2001 census. I'd imagine that number has grown considerably, but that's the most recent official data. The CIA world factbook bets the UK has 20 million women between 15 and 64, or probably closer to 17 million women of childbearing age.

So. As of 2005, 3% of, let's be reasonable and say 15 million used an implant. 450,000 women that year.

This is not the same as the number of implantations, as the implant is intended to be replaced every 3 years.

This is also not the total number of women who have used it since it was introduced in 1999, which IS the non-existent data set the "oh the humanity!" articles are citing.

I am certain hundreds of thousands more users have existed or currently exist. Merck does not seem to have any sales figures or total-usage-per-country statistics available, and NICE suggests that they don't really know how many women have gotten them, how many times.

The usage rate cited was accurate for the device being available for 5 years. It has now been available--and gaining in popularity--for over 10. Usage may have doubled. Anyone with better data please let me know.

But this is the data I have. okay. .05% failure rate. 250 pregnancies allowable per 450,000 users. we're out by 350. This is clearly an epidemic and the drug should be taken off the shelves.

Except.

The failure rate is for perfect use, when neither doctor nor patient is a moron. If you read the relevant trial data you'll find that about half the failures associated with the implant were in fact pregnancies that were already under way. Implanon is not a day-after pill and is not marketed as such. Patient didn't know she was pregnant, urine test came up with a false negative, implant went ahead, statistical fail. Okay, do blood and urine tests before implantation. Zing. Other failures were pregnancies that appeared to have started within a week of insertion. Apparently the patient was so excited to go try it out she didn't hear when the doctor said "give it two weeks to get into your system. If you've already ovulated, this will not retroactively prevent egg release. Hold your horses until you've had your next period." Not an indication of the drug failing to work as it says on the tin.

Still others cited well-known drug interactions (many of which were not mentioned until after the discovery of a pregnancy), poorly-inserted implants, and morbid obesity as reasons for failure (and undetected pregnancy, both for visual and chemical reasons). The device is intended as a one-size-fits-most, and if your body needs more, your doctor should notice that when you show up. These are still not faults of the drug or even its distribution method, but failures in staff training.

It is a common medicine, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously--it should only be administered by trained, informed medical practitioners who understand how it will work for each individual patient. I'm sorry, but "the doctor prescribed it to me even though I'm too fat for it to work" is not a fault of the product, it is a fault of the doctor. There are other things that will work for the obese, such as IUDs and local-absorption products such as the Ring.

Most of the complaints, of the 584 cited by the BBC, were apparently device-expulsion related. Yes, bodies do that. They don't like foreign objects embedded in them. It's why piercings sometimes disappear (my sister had an eyebrow piercing suddenly and painlessly vanish. The ring just fell off in her hand. True!) and how splinters quietly slip away. If the device is properly implanted subcutaneously this is less likely to happen. Again, Human Error. If the damn thing falls out, and you run off and get knocked up anyway, don't blame the device. Blame your stupid self for not calling your doctor immediately and saying "look bitch, the damn thing fell out" and using condoms until you can get it re-inserted properly.

There may have been a few people for whom the drug just didn't work. I'm sure there are. And people have gone off it for reasons such as weight gain, headache, mood changes, and desire to have children. Some people have expressed anger about scars the IMPLANTED BIG PIECE OF PLASTIC GOD DAMN DO YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF WHEN YOU SPEAK? left after removal. These are all well-documented risks that you should discuss with your doctor in a pre-insert session so you can determine if this is the right birth prevention method for you.

The 584 pregnancies are not statistically relevant. They should not deter women who wish to prevent pregnancy from using this product.



Part 2. Why I'm Angry.

I'm not surprised to see the BBC's health team cite piss-poor statistics again. Every time an issue regarding medicine or public health comes up they manage to completely blow it out of proportion, be completely wrong, or simply not understand the scientific relevance of the data they're citing, pro or con. Their statistical analysis team is pathetic, probably because it's one high school-aged intern in a windowless room with an unrestricted internet connection (for medical research, after all) and an HD monitor for better porn viewing. They're usually wrong, and if they're not wrong, they're exaggerating, and if they're not exaggerating, it's not relevant.

Nevertheless, they have a responsibility to uphold when it comes to issues of public health, particularly family planning issues. (don't you hate that term? 'family planning--of course everyone plans to have a family someday, just not right now!' what about 'family prevention' issues? That's my kind of term.) The BBC is the most respected news provider in the world. What they write gets read and trusted.

Most people do not read news articles' statistics with an air of complete unbelief. Most people do not have the time or patience to check their facts and figure out where their numbers are coming from, or are composed of. Most people just read "600 pregnancies! This stuff is useless! I'll never waste my money on it, no way. I'll trust my good sense." Not realizing that it's 600 out of hundreds and hundreds of thousands, not realizing that most of the failures are in fact unrelated to the medicine entirely, not realizing that this news is not newsworthy. It's the 5th most popular story on their site today. The BBC is affecting people's judgement with their pure, unadulterated idiocy. Some dumb teenage girls who were considering an implant may now decide to try their luck without, ('cos hey, you know what's smart? teenagers.) because Doofus in the office wanted to make a sensational headline. Or they'll go with the Estrogen/Progesterone combi pill, which has over 60 years worth of reported side effects and time-sensitive dosage related failures to its name.

This insert is one of dozens of medicines which have emerged in response to the regular failures of the original pill. We know it sucks. It works, but at such a cost as to make it not worthwhile to many people. The daily pills at exactly the same time; the weight-gain, the bloating, the depression, the nausea, the acne, the drug interactions, the fibroids, the migraines...it's all well-reported. Is Implanon the be-all fix? Of course not. We can always strive to improve it, and there's plenty of other options that work well for plenty of women. I'm happy with a non-hormonal IUD. In 10 years I'll have to get another one, but hopefully by then the fear will have passed. But the point is, it is hugely irresponsible for the BBC to wag its ass around bad-mouthing what are, even where they aren't perfect, clear improvements on the old medicine. It is stupid to try and shock the public into mistrusting a drug which is far more trustworthy than most alternatives, including Old Reliable.

The new drugs have developed because people figured out how to do things better, even if the primary improvement needed was in the patient herself. Implants and IUDs don't have different numbers in the 'perfect use' and 'typical use' columns. Because they don't rely on a normal human brain with a normal memory and normal habits to keep them working. If you miss one Pill, even by a few hours, your entire month is wasted. That's not reliable, even if the chemical in them technically is.

Implanted hormonal birth control is the best option for teenagers--it's low-dose so it doesn't screw with their brains or bodies too much, it steadily delivers, they don't have to think about it, it may slightly lower libido which could help them focus in school, and as IUDs may slightly increase your likelihood of contracting an STI if you sleep around they're a better bet for kids with poor impulse control or who get pressured by stupid boys out of using condoms.

Throwing teen girls directly into daily pill regimens does not teach responsibility. It relies on a responsibility that is usually absent--a dearth which is likely to have devastating consequences. Our state and culture should encourage usage of thought-free birth control for girls. The Pill has gone the way of the Studebaker--the clunky, awkward old technology without anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, or airbags. Birth control needs to keep you safe from yourself as well as others, which pills cannot be relied upon to do--particularly when you're in situations (lake house weekends) where sexual activity is likely (the whole reason you're there.)

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I also believe our state and culture should encourage teenage through college-age boys and girls to think that buying condoms is coooool. It's just not right that it's so awkward to go to the student health centre and see the big fishbowl full of brightly-coloured prophylactics on the desk next to the kind-eyed elderly receptionist. "I..I want them, I know they're there for us, there's even a heart-shaped sign on the front that says 'Take what you need!' but...but...what if she's a widow? What if she hasn't had any in like, half a century? What if she's judging me, or jealous? How am I going to get any good use out of these if all I can think about is the old condom lady?" I remember gingerly taking a couple on my way out one day after having my arse x-rayed, just because I can't resist free stuff, and she looked at me, smiled, and said "Always the girls taking those. I don't think the boys can face me for them, but I've always insisted on having them out for you kids. Be safe!" I smiled as I left the building--my bruised but not broken coccyx still aching--then shuddered at the idea of ever using Sweet Old Lady Condoms.

Oh Mr. Darcy!

I've been reading a lot lately (see previous post about work visa application) and, because they're free and readily available, I've found myself nose-deep more than my fair share of 19th century British novels. In the past few weeks I've read Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Sense & Sensibility, and a few Sherlock Holmes short adventures. I think Middlemarch will be my next undertaking, though I'm a bit daunted by the first page.

With the exception of the Holmes stories and Alice, my text choices have been largely...similar. Strikingly so. Without meaning to, I wonder if I haven't chosen the three most similar narratives ever written. Perhaps this similarity would not be quite so pronounced to me if I hadn't chosen to read all of them in sequence, but while I've enjoyed all three to a similar extent, the same difficulties have dampened my enjoyment to the same extent in all. I'd like to document these themes here--of plot and language most particularly--for my own future reference. As a reader, you may find this dull, as this is a posting wherein you may find my thoughts, not my fury.

Similar Plot Points and Characters in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility

-All three involve at least one young woman being bedridden and on the verge of death because of illness, but no men. Jane Eyre, Marian Halcombe, and Marianne Dashwood catch some form of stress/hanging out in the rain-related disease.

Likewise, clearly-doomed girls (the excessively-innocent ultra-pious who talk about how lovely death would be) Helen Burns (Eyre) and Anne Catherick (White) spend some time bedridden before kicking it.

-All 3 protagonists are between age 17 and 20, and all marry men between age 35 and 40. Each marriage must be for love, because though the women are all of high birth (Jane Eyre unknowingly) the men they marry are handicapped in some way. Edward Ferrars (Sense) has lost the bulk of his inheritance, Edward Rochester (Eyre) has been blinded and lost a hand in the destruction of his manor house, and Walter Hartright (White) is sickeningly middle-class, and Laura lost her fortune when her (deceased) first husband declared her dead and stole it. While everybody is still fairly wealthy at the end, they all lose a significant investment or holding.

-All three are caught up in inheritance issues equalling or exceeding £20,000.

-All three involve a nasty elderly woman who screws things up royally for the protagonist with her selfishness. (Mrs. Reed, the Countess, Mrs. Ferrars)

-All three involve one major female character being pressured by a guy that she doesn't like to marry him. (St. John Rivers, Colonel Brandon, Sir Percival Glyde) Only Brandon's pressure ends in something resembling love and financial stability.

-All three involve at least one pair of close, affectionate, inseparable sisters, and it is generally understood that there's a prudent one and a pretty one. (Marian and Laura, Elinor and Marianne, Diana and Mary Rivers) At least one of the sisters has a Mary-based name.


Similar Thematic Elements in the aforementioned text group

-The female protagonist through who's eyes much of the story is told is invariably well-educated, exceedingly honest and forthright, and never makes a statement or decision that is not perfectly well-justified both to her religion and her caste. She likewise spends a lot of paper justifying her decisions and statements to the audience, imploring us to realize that they're being utterly selfless in all things and are only seeking to do what is best for everyone involved.

-People who start high end in the middle. People who start in the middle end with a compromised version of high.

-Women who have choices they can make are just as likely to make ones that cause them harm as good, because they must consider what is righteous regardless of their best interests. Jane Eyre nearly goes to India, where she's sure to die within days of arrival of disease or heat-stroke, because she knows that God would want her to be a missionary. The only thing that stops her is she also knows that God would not want her and St. John to marry without loving each other. Likewise, Laura Fairlie marries Sir Percival, despite the fact she doesn't like him, because she agreed to the engagement to please her father on his death-bed, and it would be shameful to break it. Elinor Dashwood, meanwhile, keep's Lucy's secrets, despite how badly they hurt her and despite how useful it would be to disclose them, because she promised she would. Virtue always wins over self-interest and intelligence.


Similar Endings in the aforementioned

-Everybody gets married.

-Everybody has babies, or there's hints of babies.

-All the women fall into their roles as subservient wives, though they had the capacity to be powerful and respectable women in their own right.


Similar Things That Piss Me Off in the aforementioned

The ladies always have the option of doing something deemed vaguely improper but better for everyone--and always decline. The authors, rather than congratulating their heroines for their good deeds, make things kinda suck for them as a consequence, but they nevertheless feel better in their hearts for having done what was socially accepted, in spite of the fact that no sensible person around them would have done the same.

Jane Eyre clearly acknowledges that Bertha Mason is not really Mr. Rochester's wife, as she's not only batshit but hell-bent on Mr. Rochester's immolation, but rather than see what is an unfortunate circumstance and run off to the south of France as his beloved mistress (while maintaining Bertha's safe upkeep), which would ensure everyone's estates and safety, she runs off to develop pneumonia and endure abuse under St. John, and lets Bertha burn the house down and severely handicap Rochester. Her virtue screwed her over and left her with half an estate and half a man. Jane grins and bears it, and Brontë seems to think she got off no better than she should have.

Laura Fairlie will be coming into possession of £20,000 in under the space of a year, and her guardian is a douchebag. But rather than refuse to marry Sir Percival until her finances are hers to control, she does what the men around her want, because that's 'right,' and loses everything. Had she said "hey buddy, let's wait 6 months" the story probably wouldn't have happened, but she would not have wound up with the line in her will that gave him everything upon her death (she probably would not have wound up married to him at all) so Marian probably wouldn't have gotten typhus, she wouldn't have wound up in an asylum, and neither the Count or Sir Percival would have wound up dead. Had she taken this one step in her best interest everyone, even the jerks, would have been better off.

Had Mrs. Dashwood stood up for herself against her stepson after her husband's last wishes were for him to provide for her and her daughters, they could have moved somewhere besides the little cottage their income afforded them. They really don't meet anyone that great or helpful on account of it, Marianne wouldn't have had to endure the BS that was Willoughby, Elinor could have been in money enough for Mrs. Ferrars to approve of her relationship with Edward, and Lucy probably would have wound up with Robert anyway but with less money to taunt Elinor with. But no, Mrs. Dashwood doesn't seem to think it's proper to say "look, buddy, I know you're a sucker and your wife's a bitch, but you're not weaseling out of your obligation to your family." so Marianne wound up with a "putrid fever." Bleh.

Atheists Love Christmas too!

Why do you want to take the holiday season away from me, theists? I'm just as cold as you, and is that not provocation enough to seek warmth and good cheer with the people I love? (Did you know atheists can love? When it is reciprocated it is the best feeling on earth. It is real--a bond between two real people, not two people and their shared imaginary friend, which, let's face it, is creepy.) Even your official church documents acknowledge that the birth of your saviour (who was elected saviour, what, 300 years after his alleged lifetime?) could have really been anytime--nobody's sure or gives a hoot, but these Pagans have a pretty good party scheduled for mid-December, so that seems a good a time as any. We've already put a damper on their fertility festival in the spring, might as well ruin the mead-and-fire party too.

Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing the website of Boss Creations which sells "CHRIST-mas" trees--£300 artificial douglas firs with a giant neon cross glowing from within like a...well, like nothing else. Take a moment and google it. Go on. I'll wait.

...it is always nice to see you says the man behind the counter to the woman coming inside, she is shaking her umbrella...doo-doo du-doo dut-dut du-doo...

Yep. Did you notice the red white and blue "Christian Nation" pile of offense? Why has no one told these people that the USA is neither Christian nor even religious? It's not. Really. America does have an official anthem, an official seal, an official flag, and an official football team but it does not have, and has never had, an official religion or a recognition or sanction of any religion of any kind. Them's the rules. Like 'em or leave.

Wait, what, am I pulling their own bullshit to serve my ends? "like it or leave" eh? them's fightin' words! (especially from an ex-pat) But seriously. It is so brazenly disrespectful of the nation for a religious group who seeks daily to remove the rights of everyone who disagrees with them--Feminists, minorities, Muslims, homosexuals, Blacks, the educated--to arbitrarily decide that the country *actually* is Christian and Naughty People are trying to take it away and punish them for their beliefs. How Dare you try to undermine the truth of what makes the USA so remarkable? How Dare you try to impose your theistic law to the land, while simultaneously condeming other nations for doing precisely the same thing with a different religion?

How Dare you suggest that because other people want to be festive in December that we're not only trying to outlaw your obsolete religion, but trying to make it mean something it doesn't?

Christmas is a religious takeover of the winter solstice celebration. It began as a celebration of light on the longest, darkest night of the year in the hemisphere. It still is for many millions of people. It is a time to be warm. It is a time to be together. It is a time to celebrate our survival so far and to hope our friends and families keep living until spring. That's the long and short of it.

All that December 25 birth of your saviour bullshit? You Made It Up. Just like your deities and your nonsensical rules and your ban on mixed-fiber fabrics. It's shit. Admittedly, it's old shit, but that doesn't make it right. You hurt my feelings by trying to tell me I can't celebrate at this time of year because I'm not one of you. By telling me I can't send cards wishing people good cheer because they don't have angels on the cover and verses overleaf. That I can't give people gifts simply to warm their hearts, not because it represents something in your thought-control system.

I am insulted. As an American I feel like I bend over backward for you far too often, let you have your way far more than is necessary or right. This is a time of togetherness. If the only way you can unify your flock is to convince them there's bad guys out to get them, maybe you should re-evaluate why you're together.

Me? Me.

I have finished my MA. It's official, I have my letters and results. Yadda yadda. NatWest were true to their word and sent me my bank statements on Monday. I checked through my application, signed and dated it, and put it in the post. I also sent a birthday card to my dear grandmother. They put this gigantic gold stamp on it to send to the US, which was pretty nifty. I hope she likes it.

I checked with the post office and saw that as of yesterday evening the parcel had been signed for. I checked my bank account today and saw that I'm officially £550 poorer. I think they got it.

Oof. I'm now broke. I just went ahead and canceled my gym membership and Boy has agreed to take over my chunk of the rent and council tax until I can find a job. I'm such a filthy freeloader. Hopefully I'll have a visa soon, maybe even before February, and will apply like mad to get a job and start paying for myself again like a real grown-up. At this point I really don't care what the gig is, so long as it's out of the snow.

I filled out the form truthfully and fully, though there was this one bit that made me uncomfortable. The form indicates I must include my Biometric Residence Permit, and write its number and expiration dates and such in the space provided. My application will be deemed incomplete and will be returned to me without this data and official card. I never received a Biometric Residence Permit. I'm a Tier 1 (Post-Study Work) applicant here legally on a Tier 4 (Student) visa. Neither of these categories are included in the Biometric Residence Permit scheme, and indeed, when I checked the Border Agency website, I discovered I am Forbidden from applying for a Biometric Residence Permit. Yet the Tier 1 (Post-Study Work) visa application is incomplete without one and will be rejected out of hand. I assume this is a clerical error and I'll be fine, but it about scared the pants off of me.

The Border Agency website also informs me that there's a 6-week wait time before applications are considered. They're currently considering applications submitted on or before October 13. Yay. I feel naked without my passport. And my overcoat.

My neighbourhood is sitting in about 6" of snow right now, and the sidewalks are coated in two-inch thick mirror-smooth ice. At the time of writing it is just past 4:30pm and pitch black outside. Now is the winter of my discontent. Or at least my griping about the weather. Sheez. One day I hope to be wealthy enough to have a winter home somewhere closer to the Tropic of Cancer. Not even somewhere particularly nice, just Not Here. Hell, it'd be great if we could just have a Winter London somewhere south of here, maybe in northern Algeria. It's not like they need...oh wait, I'm starting to sound like an imperialist. Oof, at least now I understand where they get it from.

Cold cold cold cold. I was so optimistic when I set the heat timer. Yeah, the house will be tolerably warm until 6:30, you don't need to waste money on gas until then... yeah right.

I think it's funny how, when you're cold or hungry, that's all you can think about. You could be the cleverest person alive, but as soon as the heat dries up the only thoughts you can muster are "Cold! Hey stupid, yeah you up there! Toes, fingers, legs, and nose agree--cold! You know what's great? Warm. Find warm. Oh, and by the way--Cold." It's like the body stages a coup d'intellect. The only ideas my id will let through are pictures of socks and instructional videos on how to open the airing cupboard and switch on the boiler. Okay! Okay, I'm going...

(toes cheer)

Republicans and why I'm not going back (Incoherent Rant)

You have got to be f'ing kidding me. You can't f'ing hold the f'ing congress hostage like that--saying you won't vote for necessary social progress until you let the wealthy have unnecessary increases to their wealth contrasted with the rest of the population. This is Nonsense. What the hell is going on?

Why aren't people rioting?

Get it together, middle class! The American Aristocracy is working very hard to take your rights, your health, your food, your jobs, and your freedom away, and yet you're not gathering stones? There is no more room for debate. There is no more room to let the wealthy and their doting pawns laugh at you while trampling over your votes, your liberties, and your self-interests. They have never listened to you, they will never compromise or consider reason, they don't give a wet slap about equality, the Constitution, or civil liberties. START THROWING THINGS.

Oh middle-class Republicans. They're stupid enough to believe their representatives when they tell them continuation of tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting services to the poor will help them in the long run. They think Wall Street deserves every cent it earns, despite Everything, as they hope to one day enjoy a portion of that money if they play by the rules. That they will one day fulfil the American Dream and be one of the wealthy fat cats at the top--and gee, when I'm rich and famous, I sure won't want to pay taxes so the poor can survive the winter! These hope-blind sheep are proud enough to think that the poor don't deserve anything, and ignorant enough to disregard simple truths about poverty.

Being poor and living like you're poor are only likely to continue your poverty, and the poverty of your children. It is very difficult to pull yourself out of poverty, particularly when you're born into it, regardless of how many or few government handouts are available to you.

Poor people toe a fine line between fed and housed and hungry on the streets. The difference between 'sandwich' and 'no sandwich' is the difference between 'law-abiding citizen' and 'violent criminal.' Ask Haiti. You can't starve people, offer them nothing, keep them unhealthy, and prevent them from providing for themselves and expect your society to survive. Ask South Africa under Apartheid. Y'know, all those nice lovely middle-class homes surrounded by chain-link fences and razor wire. That's what happens when the difference between the rich and the poor becomes too skewed. The poor become, not angry, not insubordinate, but Desperate. Desperate enough to break, to steal, to cause great harm in order to find something to pawn.

Providing for the poor--keeping people housed, fed, educated, and healthy--benefits everyone in very direct ways. It is not philanthropy to provide Medicaid and unemployment benefits--it is national and personal security. But these projects do require money in order to function. Wealthy individuals and corporations should Gleefully allow their Bush tax cuts to expire, happily pay an extra million or so per annum, because it means they can lay off a few of their security guards, and maybe even defuse the land mines in the croquet field. Perhaps go outside when the weather is fair, and open the windows in the armoured car.

Because fed, sheltered, safe, and educated people don't break into houses. They're comfortable enough in their lives to not need to, and they're smart enough to recognize that they have something to lose if they get caught. If your life has value to you, you protect it. You don't improve the value of your own life by devaluing others'--you just make them more likely to try and take yours off you.

These same gun-waving "Christians," these same people who continue to insist the President's birth certificate is fraudulent and support senators who refuse homosexuals the right to love while leading the most pathetic lives of (white) adultery, money laundering, and graft need to just come clean about what they are. They're bigots. Bigots who do what their politically-bankrolled preachers tell them to do in their neon-lit mega-churches. Bigoted idiots who have been lied to time and again--and been present, but not paying attention, when those lies have been exposed--by mouthpieces which avow that social and fiscal conservatism are not only linked, but appropriate for all.

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Homosexual marriage does not harm, undermine, de-value, or threaten heterosexual marriage. It only increases the number of marriages per year.

The function of marriage is not to make babies. People's reproductive systems can do that regardless of marital status, and married people are not legally obligated to have kids. Neither are unmarried people forbidden. That would require quite invasive government, and would get real ugly, real fast.

The function of marriage is, however, to ensure shared financial responsibility, and the right to make choices for your spouse in the event of his or her incapacitation.

Guess what--that's not even me being uber-liberal and progressive and minimalist. Read any novel written before 1900--over and over the story is "wealthy woman marries wealthy man, her estate passes to him, he squanders it and abuses her, she runs away a pauper, without claim to home or stock, she falls in love with a poor man, her wicked husband dies, she and poor man take the house back." (Okay, well that's essentially the story of the Woman in White, and bears resemblance to Jane Eyre and Pride & Prejudice) Marriage is nothing, and Never Has Been anything, but a financial arrangement.

Or an immigration issue.

You can love without marriage, and marry without love. You can equally replace both words 'love' and 'marriage' with 'sex' and be equally right. It is pretty much indistinguishable from any corporate merger, except somewhat less binding.

It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, holy.

Marriages are worth exactly the paper they're written on. Nothing more, nothing less. They have no intrinsic worth, no spiritual elevation, no super-duper special Us-Only-Because-We're-Chosen properties that can possibly be undermined by opening them up to homosexuals. Fundies like to say that marriage is a super-sacred covenant between the couple and their deity, but it doesn't upset them that Hindus, Taoists, or Buddhists are allowed to wed. (For the purpose of clarity I will acknowledge the shared god of Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Rastafari, and Christianity) It Does annoy them that Atheists, Wiccans, Feminists, contraceptive-users, and poor people can share their visitation rights, but they can grudgingly say "land of the free, I guess" and get back to the serious business of chewing their McBurgers. But when it comes to gay people having the ability to co-sign on a mortgage or help each other's credit scores?!

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I'm really just writing for the sake of venting frustration. This probably doesn't make a heap of sense. I'm just sick and tired of America embarrassing me--not just the Fundies, but the government and media run by the greedy wealthy who are determined to find a way of milking money from absolutely every aspect of life. People who won't perform medical procedures on the customers they insure--not because it's hopeless, but because it's expensive. People who demand you pay a fee for the right to use your internet connection how you want to, to use the products and services you choose. People who lie about matters of significance and aren't fired or even made to apologise when they're caught. People who make the system of checks and balances necessary.

Because that's how it's designed to work--both parties take the most extreme version of their wants to the floor, and through a system of compromises, come to a liveable middle ground. Everyone is dissatisfied, but nobody is beheaded for having a beard. Nobody starts with a reasonable middle-ground, because where's the fun in that? Nobody starts with what is actually best for everyone, because you can't froth at the mouth about reasonable taxation or the notion that everyone is different and that's okay. Politicians must come to the lectern with an all-or-nothing scenario so they have somewhere to haggle from. Which wastes everyone's time and gets everyone upset. Why not just start with the idea "everyone is different, and as long as their differences don't actually cause physical, financial, or psychological damage to others, they should be allowed to live life the way they choose?" What is Wrong with that? What? what...

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As to why I'm not going back, I have a wonderful boy and I'm happy in London. I've submitted my work visa application and hopefully will have the right to get a job around here in the new year. We're about six inches deep in snow right now, but it's a good opportunity to snuggle up and waste time blogging.

No Holds Barred

Beautiful.

Thanks-Fusion

This was my first Turkey day in my own home that I made myself. Well, Boy helped. A lot. But we did it ourselves, and it was exciting.

We did blend a little bit of British food in with our traditional American fare. Instead of mashed potatoes and a sweet potato casserole, for instance, we made a vegetable roast of potatoes, purple potatoes (nom, and colourful!) parsnips, carrots, and butternut squash, seasoned with fresh rosemary and sage from the garden.



The result was NOM.

I made buttermilk biscuits, not really out of respect for tradition, but because I've never really understood the point or intended flavour of stuffing. They were very tasty, but did not rise very well--I've noticed this trend in my gas oven.



Boy and Boy's Brother roasted a chicken and said it was delicious. I'll take their word for it.

I also made a green bean casserole. The mushroom soup and green beans came out of tins, but I French-fried my onions myself! The result was pretty tasty, and amazingly bad for you. I baked it in a terra-cotta dish I found stashed above a cabinet that looked like it'd seen the inside of its fair share of ovens. It did a beautiful job. The recipes I found were all American, and I think they expected the soup to have more salt, so it wasn't as salty as usual, but it was certainly edible. (We ate the other half today for lunch, on toast, with a garlic and habanero sauce, and it was Wonderful.)



We bought cranberry sauce from Tesco, and it was actually much tastier than similarly-priced American sauces. But alas, no slorping sound when it fell out of the tin. (It was in a jar.)

We set up some speakers in the dining room and listened to Skynyrd for its cultural value. We sliced into my second pumpkin pie in the space of a week and it was glorious. The crust worked, and was (remains) flaky and tasty. I wrung out the fresh pumpkin in an old t-shirt instead of squeezing handfuls and it made the process much faster. (Thanks, mom!) Whipped up more maple syrup and cream. For their cultural value.

I'm still full.

Wow.

Oof.

Yellow

I have painted my bathroom yellow, and will shortly be painting the study blue. I think it looks quite nice. My new drill has not yet arrived, but I do have a package for my next-door neighbours in my front hall.

I made my first pumpkin pie this past Thursday and it was wonderful. Well, I say wonderful. The fill was wonderful. The crust was just...bizarre. I used an Alton Brown crust recipe and did not like it. The edges did not burn, but became very hard and crunchy. The crust under the fill remained flexible and almost...rubbery. Not sure how I managed that. I've asked my mom to source a more idiot-proof crust recipe if she or the neighbours can think of one. The fill was really, really good though. I made it completely from scratch, from a whole pumpkin. (Didn't have much choice, actually--I couldn't find tinned stuff. But I was up for the challenge.) I gutted and steamed it (kept the seeds) then peeled and squeezed the water out by hand. I pureed it with my soup-er-izer (little spinny blade on a stick thing) and added it to single cream, a few eggs, hand-ground cloves, hand-rasped nutmeg, and some cinnamon, a bit of sugar (with a few drops of Lyle's Golden Syrup mixed in 'cos I didn't think to get brown sugar) and a pinch of salt. Baked it for 45 minutes, rotating a few times 'cos its a gas oven, and served it with cream that I whipped (with a whisk) with a generous teaspoon of maple syrup. OMG. It was light and fluffy, not overpoweringly sweet or spiced but very flavourful. I did it almost entirely by hand and all by myself.

Like I said, the crust was garbage. I think it may have been because I included some vegetable shortening when I should have just used butter. Oh Alton, why did you lead me astray?

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Also on Thursday I officially received my MA in Advanced Theatre Practice. My post-study work visa application is all ready to go with the exception of my bank statements, which must be mailed to me because NatWest has to have them hand-engraved by Norwegian monks. I don't look at the £550 application fee as a great spending of money--it was just money I was holding in my account for this purpose. It was never mine at all.

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This past weekend was our 1-year House-I-Versary here in Lewisham. We celebrated with some friends who moved into their house the exact same weekend we did. It was a lovely time.

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The 25th is both Thanksgiving and Ben's and my 6th anniversary. Though of course 4 of those 6 years have been spent in wildly different time zones, we've nevertheless perservered with close affection through the modern marvel that is Skype. Thank you, Skype, for making my relationship possible, and keeping us in constant contact for years so that we might eventually find a way to be together on the ground.

Any phone company executive that would destroy net neutrality for the sake of trying to "recoup" perceived "losses" from international internet telephony is a horrible, disgusting entity that deserves nothing but inconsolable loneliness for the rest of his meaningless, pitiful life. You will not make money from making VoIP prohibitively expensive.

You will only break families.

Financial Antique

I am sick to the teeth of British banks. Not that American ones are much better, but at least from US banks you can expect some semblance of modern business practices.

Let's have a look at my bank, shall we? Let's call them, oh, I dunno, DouchEast. DouchEast says they close at 5 on weekdays, but that actually means they lock the door and clear the place out by 4:15, a good two hours before most of their customers leave work. Cheque deposits, done by machine or in person, take 8-11 business days to become available to you, despite their ability to be processed instantaneously. DouchEast can rarely do anything for you in-shop--most things you request must be mailed to you, and will arrive in 7-10 days. Even if they're just documents that could be easily and securely printed off in office.

DouchEast's business practices involve a great deal of pressure--both on the employees and the customers. Employees are expected to maintain a quota of account openings per week, regardless of what their customers come in there for or the number of people in the country who need to open bank accounts. They are pushed to use every tactic available to them--up to and including flat lies--to lock customers into the ugliest, most expensive accounts and credit cards they have. When modern, skeptical customers shake off this pressure, employees are reprimanded for not meeting goals, and may eventually be fired for not being good enough salespeople. Likewise, employees are required, for PR purposes, to use their unpaid time to volunteer in the community in some capacity. Rather than be at work, where the community needs them most.

I believe DouchEast has, after helping as best they could to collapse the economy, had to make some HR cuts to maintain top-tier bonus packages. Naturally, most of these cuts have had to come from front-line plebian services, as of course the investment bankers who caused the depression are too valuable to let go. Most of their branches have desks and windows for up to 8 cashiers, but rarely have more than one person running them. Likewise, they have offices for up to ten people at a time to discuss their accounts, but typically have one person or no one available to do this. This causes queues--and fury. In banks, even a queue of five people can take an hour to slog through, as there's no telling what people are coming in to handle. It's not like checking out at the grocery store, or even getting on a roller coaster. These days queues are out the door, with fifty people or more waiting for one stressed, exhausted clerk to call them. Fifty people who have stepped out early on their lunch break because it's the only time they can be there when the bank is open, and will be delighted to discover that they won't actually have their inquiry addressed until their office closes for the day.

What makes this even more fun is the fact that their operation model sends most of their employees out of the building for lunch breaks at exactly the same time as most of their customers arrive. This is not a new problem or phenomenon--most people have jobs these days. Even back in the day when women generally did not have jobs, they had no need to go to the bank because they also weren't allowed to manage accounts. Banks have Always had to deal with most of their customers at lunch time. And they've always been short staffed at lunch time.

There are several very simple, practical, and inexpensive solutions to this problem. One is part-time shift labour. The morning shift arrives at 9 and leaves at 2; the afternoon shift arrives at noon and leaves at 5. The office is double-staffed for two hours right when most of their customers show up, everyone works a reasonable amount of time between meals, you can stagger in a few 15-minute breaks for tea, snacks, and cigarettes, and everybody gets a fair day.

Alternatively, you can have lunch-cover employees. Backstage administrative assistants most of the day, this team eats first, then comes in and takes people's places as they leave to eat in groups arranged by the size of the cover team. Once lunches have cycled through, they may go back to stapling forms and playing solitaire like normal.

Another option is to do what several companies I've worked for in New York do and call in lunch for the whole office. You buy a variety of foods, making sure to account for everyone's eating preferences and allergies--some online services even allow everyone in your office to login and, within a price cap set by the company, select a meal from up to 5 delivery places a day--and then let folks sneak off for fifteen minutes at a time to eat.

What you do not do is let most of your staff disappear for an hour the hour they are needed the most. That is stupid. And it makes people angry. Angry enough to take their money elsewhere.

Oh but wait. Everyone else behaves exactly the same way.

If it weren't for the existence of banks, no one would believe that an industry could actually survive being run so poorly. People have complained about banking services, opening hours, fees, and money-making practices since the invention of the bank. They're run badly, and they're not run with the Main Street consumer in mind. I recognize that banks are businesses and need to make money. I'm not averse to the idea that employees need to be paid. I have no real problem with bankers investing my money in rational ways for their profit, provided my money is kept safe and made available to me whenever I need it.

I Do, on the other hand, have a problem with banks being under-staffed, causing queues which waste my time and the valuable time of others. I have a problem with inefficiencies, like having to wait a week for a document I need now that can and should be printed immediately. "oh, but it's printed by our secure printing service in the middle of nowhere..." bah bah bah you could get it for me but you won't because of a policy that was established in 1870.

Everyone else has modernized. I can get free wifi on the grounds of ancient ruins. I can ride into the city in air-conditioned silence at 80 miles an hour in a train wherein, if I wanted to, I could roll a football down the aisle from the conductor's cabin to the rear fire exit. I have watched a hotel be built on its settled foundations in under a week. We have a probe ORBITING JUPITER. But you. You can't go to the printer behind you, pick up the official letterhead in the sheaf next to it, and print off six pages of bank statements for me because that's just not how you've always done things.

Banks, governments and churches. They must hold everyone else down in order to stay on top, and they have the power and money to do so.

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In other news, I'm conviced the Mimic Octopus is far more intelligent than any human.

wind and rain

Tears run freely
I blink them angrily away
Flicking my head to the side
So the wind will catch them.

If you see me
And I look like
I've just lost my puppy
Have no pity
I'm fine.

No really.
There's something wrong with my eyes.
I don't think it's allergies.
I wake up with my eyes dripping
And itchy
Every morning.

They water when I go outdoors
Blinding me
Freezing my face
Streaming like
Well, streamers

...
umm

yeah, I suck at poetry, but if anyone has any experience curing constantly watery eyes please let me know. It's driving me nuts.

orange

I finished painting my dining room today. It's a lovely, rich red-orange shade. I did an okay job, I think. It's kinda shiny, which is something I've never felt ballsy enough to commit to before.

I haven't found a job yet, but I've been applying.

I still haven't heard about graduation, but I'm not particularly worried that I'll pass. I am worried that they won't get their asses in gear on the paperwork soon enough to keep me and my international classmates out of hot water with border control.

In other news, I've been keeping up with Joe My God lately, and as much as I applaud the thousands of Americans who have contributed to her first real grassroots movement in decades by making "It Gets Better" videos, they make me sad. Most of the ones I've seen (made by individuals--not the awkwardly-read ones from politicians and public figures) have told of a difficult and painful childhood that was only alleviated by leaving. The only way they could find to make their lives better was to run away from their families, their homes, everything they knew, and to go somewhere safe. Because the people who were horrible to them stayed horrible when they grew up. Their families and churches remained intolerant, even dangerous.

The videos never say "it'll get better because the world is getting better." or "when you grow up, the people you want to love you will come to accept you for who you are" or even "I had a difficult discussion with my father, but he's come to tolerate me." The sweeping majority say "When you grow up, you can leave all that shit behind. In a little while you'll never have to see those fuckers again."

And in America today, that Is the best option for gay kids in the Bible Belt. Hell, in some communities it's the best option for ethnic and religious minorities, intellectuals, feminists, and even cancer victims. Just get out. There's no rehabilitating these fascists, and if you fight for your right to pursue your own happiness, in the open, pretty soon you'll start seeing burning crosses in your front yard.

Because that's what the Tea Party is. That's who video makers have had to escape in order for things to get better. The white, Christian, middle-aged bigots who don't want to have to accept anything but themselves. Indeed, they want their identity to be the national identity, the only collective identity. I don't think they even want 'different' people to join their religion, culture, or xenophobia--they just want them to go away. They oppose diversity, tolerance, and understanding. They oppose government spending on anything that isn't a free cheque for a million dollars that only they receive for being so wonderful.

The video makers have done precisely what the Teabaggers wanted them to do. Vloggers call it escaping. Baggers call it banishment. In the end, the Baggers get what they want for their community, and the Vloggers join a new one. Nobody has to change.

Teabaggers tend to live in areas of the world where they don't have to grow to accept anyone who's different because there's no one different around. Extreme conservatism is less common in urban areas because everyone is different from everyone, so there's no opportunity for cultural insularity. It is a matter of simple proximity. Urban areas do wind up hosting gangs and working around the odd integration-proofed pocket, but this is what happens to supremacy movements in diverse communities. Weirdos who can't assimilate or tolerate others find themselves on the edges of society, angry but ultimately powerless. Most people just blend in and are fine with that. They don't try to impose upon the freedoms of their neighbours, provided their neighbours extend to them the same courtesy. Any lifestyle that doesn't actively cause harm to others is just fine.

The Tea Party are the problem. They always have been. Now at least they're a unified and easily-identifiable bag of doorknobs. A quivering mountain of human blubber sitting around in their Medicare scooters, Klan hoods in one hand, misspelt sign demanding that healthcare not be extended to poor people clutched in the other sweaty palm. These are people who hate Obama because he is black, hate homosexuals because they're told anal sex is icky, try to ruin women's lives with unwanted children as punishment for not abstaining from the most natural act in human nature, and sincerely believe that America and her people are actually better than everyone else on earth.

They are not fiscal conservatives. That's giving them too much credit for learning about and understanding conservatism. Moreover, the reductions to government involvement and financial oversight they would like to see would result in catastrophe, with each one of them out of the job as soon as their employers moved overseas, or dead in explosions when their un-inspected, corner-cut factories finally shake themselves apart.

They are not social conservatives, as they don't have any coherent moral or ethical values they're sincerely trying to uphold. They demand that women not have the option of terminating pregnancy, while simultaneously demanding that no one should have to provide health insurance to them, so these miserable women are back at work trying to pay off their hospital bills mere weeks after they give birth, making them completely unable to bond with their babies or even breastfeed them. These children grow up neglected, resented, and often abused when the stress gets too bad, leading to lives of crime, hatred, and fear. They demand that students not be permitted to learn about or accept homosexuals, and demand that the only thing their kids be taught about sex is that they shouldn't do it, and try to 'cure' them as soon as they get wind that they're gay anyway, but try and hush-up the fact that their 'homophobic' pastors are routinely caught in bed with South American rent-boys, and forgive their senators and governors for having mistresses. They ignore what it really takes to uphold family values--education, acceptance, support, and dedication--in favour of hate, fear, and disgust.

Fascism is a belief that the best way to unite a country is for the government to mandate that everyone in it believe the same thing, behave the same way, and have all the same values. Once they agree on a religion, political party, and way of life, everyone must follow it without question. The Tea Party does not believe anyone should have the right to disagree with them. They do not believe anyone should be allowed to live in America without being an evangelical Christian and adhering to their teachings. They believe the church should rule the country, just as it should dictate the specifics of every individual's entire life. Because in a unified country, there is no room for individualism, intellectualism, or dissent.

No, wait. They don't believe these things. They just mindlessly repeat these things. Because they're sheep. They're sheep who have been told by their shepherds that they're the best sheep in the whole field. If they look outside the herd they may see that that's not strictly true--all the other sheep are just as pretty as them, really--so they're told not to look. The shepherd's control over them would be compromised if the herd realized that the other sheep were happy too.

You can't be at once fiscally and socially conservative in a secular state. The two are mutually exclusive. A small government cannot execute a cultural mandate. That's why they want to empower Evangelical Christian churches to bindingly establish and enforce their way of life as The only way of life. That's their goal. Not to protect religion from a powerful state that they believe would ban it, but to empower it further than it already is compared to the rest of the first world. It is frightening, disgusting, and back-assward. It is a desire fuelled not even by religion itself, but by hate, greed, and idiocy funnelled and fanned by religious and corporate leaders to further empower and fund themselves. I'm scared shitless for America right now, because too many stupid people have been organized into a singular movement that they don't and won't ever understand. They will bring painful consequences down upon themselves and the rest of the world, and all the rest of us can do is bite our fists and wait.