Another Belated Blog Post

My apologies, dear reader, for I have been lax with the posting of the blog. (Somehow that just reminded me of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, when the Jewish producers say they like Dewey because of the “shaking of the tookus”… however one spells that in Yiddish.) In any case, I’m sorry.

I’m listening to This American Life, and they’re doing a thing on the Ten Commandments. My favorite quote: “The first thing [Evangelist sex books] always tell you is that sex is a beautiful gift from God, even though it’s a gift they don’t want you to touch or even think about because you’re just going to ruin it with your filthy paws. Any physical pleasure, even pleasure you give yourself, while alone, is completely forbidden.”

Now, if that isn’t a reason to abandon evangelical Christianity, then I don’t know what is. I mean, come on. “Guarding your heart against lust.” I think the idea that there exists love without lust is crazy – unless it means familial love. Lust while one is in love is the best kind there is; depriving yourself of that is dumb.

In other news, I just sat at the Port Authority for over 45 minutes waiting to get on a bus to come back to Jackson. Basically, fewer and fewer people are driving into the city because of gas prices, so more and more people are taking public transportation. Great, unless you’re a commuter, such as I am myself. If you are unfortunate enough to make those frequent trips, it means longer lines and, thus, a longer commute. It sucks. I wish these people didn’t own massive SUVs – then maybe they could afford the gas to go back to their normal lives of spending too much money on parking and too much time sitting in super frustrating traffic.

Ok, happy thoughts. My girlfriend and I have finally figured out our official route to Los Angeles. Since originally her mom’s criticism of the trip was that we were not taking enough time, we’ve been thinking about how we can lengthen it. It doesn’t seem like I’ll get to leave work early – what ever will we do? Well, as it always seems to go, stuff started working in my favor to solve this problem. The wedding invitation said Danielle and Guest, which means the gf was invited. Thus, instead of driving to LA and then having me drive up to Santa Cruz for this wedding by myself, we are going to stop in Santa Cruz on our way out to California, do the wedding, and then go to Los Angeles afterwards. A brilliant plan – I’m dating such a smarty. This way, we’ll be driving through Yosemite, the Badlands… all the lovely natural wonders between here and California.

Ok, that ends the post I wrote last week. Now for this week:

I’m reading a book I should have read in college called Welfare’s End by Gwendolyn Mink, daughter of Patsy Takemoto Mink. She’s a professor at UC Santa Cruz, and she’s making me want to go to history grad school and do contemporary feminism. Anyway, it basically advances the idea that welfare “reform,” which really means the dismantling of welfare, is an attack on poor women of color. Hmm… any ties to reproductive rights? Think they’re going after Jenna Bush’s freedom of choice? Nope. It’s really the poor women of color who will suffer if Roe v. Wade is overturned – not rich white people. Anyway, it’s poor women of color who really need their morals guarded by others – they just can’t take care of themselves! Thank goodness those right-wingers are looking after those who need it the most. Take away their welfare, their access to reproductive health, and make them slaves again.

Now, I’m thinking about ballot initiatives because we talked about it at work, and it occurs to me that the one reason this Colorado fetal personhood amendment will never pass is because it is a direct assault not just on poor women, but rich people. As a staff member pointed out today, granting personhood with constitutional rights to a fetus would basically eliminate in vitro fertilization methods and fertility treatments. It also endangers birth control, which affects all women, not just poor ones. It will fail because it pisses off all women, not just the ones who a) aren’t heard by the media or b) are too busy working their butts off to vote.

God Bless America.