Friday, July 18, 2008

more reproduction weltschmerz

4:18 PM r: that's crazy about the woman arrested for miscarriage
 me: isn't it?!!!!!!!!!
  I swear
4:19 PM r: have you read about the thing in Colorado where they want to confer the status of "legal person" onto eggs?me: oh, it's not so much the eggs, as the sperms.
 r: well the fertilized eggs
  right?
 me: they want to confer it on zygotes pre-implantation (aka pre-pregnancy)
4:20 PM which is THE first moment that the sperm is involved.
 r: pre-fertilization?
  what about menstruation then?
 me: no, pre-IMPLANTATION
 r: oh, right, the moment of conception
  what fuckers
 me: well, the dumb thing is that this happens like a lot, and you menstruate anyway
  there's no way to know
 me: implantation is the 1st thing that starts the hormones flowing
  ergo, the beginning of PREGNANCY
4:21 PM r: so once dicks get on the scene
  a woman's rights vanish
 me: exactly
on monday Health and Human Services redefined "abortion" to include any contraception that prevents one of these things from implanting
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/07/15/hhs-moves-define-contraception-abortion
  which could be, like, the birth control pill, other hormonal ones, IUDs...!!!
every sperm is sacred
  that's some MAN'S CHILD you're talking about killing
 r: you know what?
4:22 PM maybe it makes sense to have every woman legally obligated every 3 months to go and get examined
me: In el salvador where abortion is totally illegal, they have FORENSIC GYNECOLOGISTSwhose job it is to examine women to see if they've been pregnant and if they've had abortions. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.htmlr:maybe we should harvest their eggs?
  or we could do like a kentucky fried chicken thing
  just keep women in cages all the time, cut off their legs, and make sure that they reproduce as regularly as possible
4:23 PM me: well, the fed. govt. did recommend that every fertile woman be considered "pre-pregnant" when she goes to the doctor...
 r: i guess such a collectivization of property is against american values though
 r: this is all right from margaret atwood
 me: oh yeah
  for sure
  outsourcing surrogates to india?
 

4:26 PM
r: yeah no shiti love the nytimes on that
what pieces of shit
  they did the usual false opposition
  'well on the one hand these women need their babies'
  'but on the other hand, isn't it possible that the poor people over there might not want to do it? but it's a job! yay capitalism!'
 me: ha, yeah, I remember that
  both parties needs are equal!
4:27 PM both parties get something out of the deal!
 r: yeah
  fucking flattening idiocy
 me: and also, it's like, scary in terms of the extreme stratification of reproductivity vs. non-reproductivity among women here in the U.S.
4:28 PM r: what do you mean?
 me: let's have one caste of women that has babies for a higher caste of women, rather than, oh, make it NOT OPPRESSIVE to HAVE A BABY
 r: yeah
 me: it's vital that pregnancy and birth be kept AS degrading and disadvantaging as possible
4:29 PM me: since, after all, you can be sure that the people being kept down by it will be women
  oh yeah
 r: it's true

barack-o-rama

4:02 PM P: Did you get my text abuot sketchy Chicago corruption?
 me: yeah!
  crazy
  you're gonna love this new yorker piece
  the photo at the front is breathtakingly gorgeous
 P: yeah, if you want a government contract here, apparently there are lines of crooked fuckers who get a cut of your bribe money
4:03 PM Taped phone calls were played during the Rezko trial that were like: "We can't accept bags full of cash at the office anymore; you'll have to meet me after work. Sorry, it's a new rule or something."
4:04 PM me: it was talking about how he had to navigate all these labyrinthine alliances
  I mean, he had to like piss people off to get a coalition of any size of Democrats
  cause they have like 10,000 different kinds of Democrats there and they all hate each other?!  I never knew there could be so many kinds of Democrats.
4:05 PM P: hmm, I guess so. Geographically the entire state is red, but Chicago democrats run the show(s).
4:06 PM me: it has this old Abner Mikva story about when he first came there and tried to volunteer for the Adlai Stevenson campaign
  and they were like, "who sent you?"
  and he was like, "no one sent me, I'm here to volunteer,"
  and they were like "we don't want nobody nobody sent."
4:07 PM P: haha
 me: Which of course Obama has riffed on to gorgeous effect in his campaign speeches there
  about how simultaneously nobody "sent" him and the single mothers sent him and the jobless men sent him...
4:08 PM (sniff! omg I can't think about it too much, it makes me cry.)
4:09 PM P: I need to read that. Sadly, it's hard to find among all the google results talking about the issue cover.
  I'm about sick of the media covering the media.
4:17 PM me: I know, right
4:22 PM i actually thought it was awful and unfunny
  the cover
once I saw it in person
E.J. Graff is totally right about it on slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/07/16/sex-race-lies-and-stereotypes.aspx



back to barack

3:44 PM A: me and m spent a lot of time debating whether you would be mad at obama or not
 me: for what?
 A: or barama, as i now call him
  like, saying all that dumb shit a few weeks ago?
  about like abortion and gun control and the death penalty and shit?
3:45 PM me: i'm mad at him for not having more balls on the FISA bill
 A: well yeah, that too
 me: but that other stuff, I actually think it's kind of smart, tho I disagree w him
  it's not inconsistent with what he's said before
 A: hmmm
 me: he's always been pro-death penalty, we knew that abt him
 A: yeah, i dunno, im just a bit annoyed w/ him
  but whevs
3:46 PM me: oh yeah, it's annoying, for sure
 A: there was this hilarious though horrifying article in like yahoo or something
  that began "is obama about to be trampled by a giant pair of flip-flops??"
  or something like that
  i found the literalization of the flip-flop trope to be pretty funny
3:48 PM me:
this, btw, was hilarious about all that obama shit
  T. and I absolutely adored the lead
3:49 PM me: "Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?"
  we like fell on the floor laughing
  we were like, "But... the workers... have to... seize... the means of production?"
  "and..... it's historically.... necessary?"
  "I heard him say that, didn't you?!"

everything we hold dear

1:57 PM me:
  this is amazing:
  The multi-ethnic, Catholic, Manhattanite [Al] Smith represented "card playing, cocktail drinking, poodle dogs, divorces, novels, stuffy rooms, dancing, evolution, Clarence Darrow, overeating, nude art, prize fighting, actors, greyhound racing, and modernism," as one Protestant minister raved.
1:58 PM great article on how the republicans use racism to prevent class politics in the new republic
smart commentary by bitch phd  http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-interesting-and-important-is.html

academic labor is not real labor! academic knowledge isn't real knowledge either!

2:16 PM k.f: http://xkcd.com/
2:17 PM me: OH LORD
  i've been bitching about things like that for 2 days in the comment threads on bitch phd.  http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2008/07/malaizey.html
 k.f: lol

yay the criminalization of miscarriage

12:20 PM me: oh yeah, a woman in alabama is being held on $50,000 bail for delivering a dead 7 month fetus
 http://jezebel.com/5026619/say-what-woman-charged-with-killing-fetus-after-cutting-umbilical-cord-in-utero
12:21 PM the cops (!) have decided that SHE did something to herself to make it die. not bloody likely, it sounds like. no facts. just OUTRAGEOUSNESS.
12:22 PM T: jesus.
me: This has been trying to happen for a while. you prob. don't remember a VA statute that was changed after massive outrage a couple of years ago that was going to require women to report miscarriages and stillbirths within 12 hours or face criminal penalties.
http://www.unbsj.ca/arts/english/jones/mt/archives/2005/01/unwanted_children.html
Yep, the criminalization of miscarriage is well underway!!!
12:23 PM will you get me off if i ever have a miscarriage and go to jail?
12:24 PM (i guess unless you decide that I've MURDERED OUR BABY and I deserve to be there!! :-P)
T: i'll get you off.
12:25 PM me: and then you'll deal with me at home!
 I think these things should be handled privately by the man of the house
12:26 PM (of course, he's free to call in the cops -- or just some big burly friends of his -- if he thinks he needs reinforcements...)
T: that's how it's always been done.

election year weltschmerz is back - and chatty

Hello. This blog would like to request a do-over? My Weltschmerz is
getting to be more than I can handle alone, and I thought -- the
Gchats I have about politics on a daily basis are as enjoyable as
anything I used to post here... So in keeping with the twitter-y,
rapid-bloggy zeitgeist, I am just going to cut and paste my political
chattings here. I loved the comments, so do keep chiming in. Let's
see if this works...