lurkitty

I'm alive and well, though worse for the wear after my hospital stay. My family, in their infinite wisdom, decided to clean my house while I was in the hospital. The person they hired would not have been the one I'd have chosen. I'm grateful that they cleaned the carpets, but not that they destroyed the organization I had put in my dressers. I had things I use most often in the dresser closest to my bed, which meant that some drawers had more than one type of item in them. They decided there should be only one item, and they chose clothing I don't usually wear. They stuffed all my pants into a box in the back of my closet, as well as my favorite t-shirts. They filled one of my close drawers with long- sleeved shirts, which I rarely wear even in Winter. They put stuff on the top shelf in the kitchen where I can't reach. They even reorganized my silverware drawer! Who does that???

They desecrated my altars, rearranging them and taking away things that should be there. Who touches someone else's altars?!

What disturbs me is that these people went through every drawer in my house. They stuffed important papers into boxes I haven't found yet. They went through all my papers and such. I feel violated. When I tried to tell my family as much, I was told that this was a great gift and I should be grateful. What followed was the implication that my being sick inconvenienced everyone and that I should be grateful they helped me at all. I was help I never asked for nor consented to. This is the second time they've done this (the first was when I was in the hospital for sepsis). I feel like changing all my locks and only giving a key to my friend Lonni, whom I know would feed my cats and not touch anything other than the cat stuff.

It helps to say this out loud. I'm glad none of my family is here on Dreamwidth so that I can say it.
Thanks for listening.

I'm spending a lot of energy finding things and restoring things so they're useful to me.

Controversy has sprung up around the "Once More With Feeling" charity sing-a-longs. Fox Television suddenly pulled the plug on the events and is not answering calls requesting information.

The response on Whedonesque has been predictably militant and anti-Fox (since many fans have never gotten over the Firefly fiasco). The Browncoats are organizing again.

Joss Whedon commented thus:

Hi.

This is hugely depressing. I will do everything in my power to find out the exact reasoning for this and try to convince those responsible what a mistake it is. Of course, the words "my power" might confuse my gentle readers into believing I have any. I don't know what I'll be able to do, and I've no idea even where to start. Nor do I think this was done maliciously or capriciously. But it's lousy news and it's bad business. I'm hoping the latter element might prevail. I'll keep you posted.

As ever, -j.

____________________

The organizer of the sing-alongs also responded:

Actually, I could use a good Buffy-fan lawyer who could talk to me about all this. No, no, not to sue anybody, but to find out what I should do next, business wise and everything. Anybody know anyone, drop my a line off-list. buffysingalong@gmail.com

PS - I'm in the NYC area.

adding in the next comment

Oh, and everyone, I want to thank you for your support - Joss especially, since I haven't been in contact with him at all. It's sweet that he knows about the shows and is concerned about our abrupt and unexpected halt.

And yeah, just so you all know, I was trying to do this all officially and make it profitable for everyone (the studio, etc), but now I am indeed in debt. I invested everything in making this show good and working to spread it around the country in hopes that it could soon stand on its own so I could re-coup my investment. And now...well...poopy.

But most of all, I'm just sad that I won't be dancing and singing with the fans for a while. And I just bought a nice blue Zoot Suit so I could start training to be a dancing demon, too. Double poopy.

Buffy SingALong

docjeff just alerted me to a security problem with a search service called LJ Find dot com.

It is not affiliated with 6A or LJ, but it finds some of your friends only entries if you are logged on to your journal. The problem? It doesn't just find it, it stores the search.

You can go to ljfind to opt out.

It isn't marriage, but Oregon has survived another assault to its new Domestic Partnership law, set to go into effect on Jan 1. Opponents of the law failed to turn in enough valid signatures to suspend the law and put it in the Nov. 2008 ballot.

Opponents have vowed to continue the fight.

In the wake of the $222,000 judgement against the Minnesota woman for music file-sharing, I have been thinking about music sharing lately. I do understand protection of intellectual property, and the very pressing need of musicians to make money from their work. That is a given.

I really hate buying music without hearing it. Those little 20 second previews on iTunes are not enough. I want to hear the song. I want to hear most of the album before I buy it. Back when radio stations were independent, and not all owned by Clear Channel, there was a chance that you could hear a variety of music and buy on that basis. But now, I rely on my friends to introduce me to new music. The problem is, my friends are scattered across the globe. They will introduce me to a new artist by an undisclosed method. If I like a song, I will go buy an album. I'll play it for my for my friends. I'm a fantastic viral saleswoman. I think I've sold at least 5 copies of Devil Doll's Queen of Pain alone. The Grateful Dead made a handsome living by encouraging music sharing throughout their career. I'm also a sucker for buying albums at concerts, but the reality is that Oregon is not on everyone's tour schedule. Sometimes we have to actually tell people that there is an entire state between San Francisco and Seattle (hey - Eugene was one of Jerry Garcia's favorite stops!).

Regardless of the impact of music stealing, I do think that the RIAA is cutting its collective PR throat by going after a single mom with a yearly income of $36,000 as their watershed music sharing case. It's not going to scare all the bulletproof college kids who know how to cover their electronic tracks. It is going to paint the RIAA , and the record companies, as capricious and cruel. It will do nothing to promote the reputation of the artists whose works were stolen. Will the artists see any of the money from this case? Or just the bad publicity?

It could be worse. In the UK, their equivalent of the RIAA, the Performing Rights Society, is suing a car mechanics firm called Kwik Fit because its employees play personal radios at work. According to the Performing Rights Society, this amounts to public performance of music and is a copyright infringement. But. it. was. on. the. radio....aaagggghhhhhh...........

My Great Aunt Francis was a flambouyant woman of the sort whose personality preceded her into the room. Everyone, even friends, called her Auntie Francis. Her husband died early in their marriage, perhaps in the war, I don't recall right now, but he left behind a single son, Kenneth.

At a very early age, Kenneth was found to be mentally retarded, in the nomenclature of the era. He could not control his own body. Her friends and some family members urged her to institutionalize him, but Auntie Francis would have none of that, convinced that no one would care for her boy. Living on the inheritance from her husband, she raised Kenneth herself all her life. He was not allowed to go to school, and needed help doing even the most basic things. He could barely talk, and only those accustomed to his slurred vocabulary could understand him. Auntie Francis always knew there was more to him than those who kept telling her to send him away.

When he was in his early teens, someone gave him a typewriter to play with. Instead of gibberish, Kenneth started typing words. To everyone's surprise, except Auntie Francis, Kenneth was literate. Beneath his palsied body was a brain appropriate to his age. He wasn't mentally retarded at all. He had cerebral palsy. The typewriter allowed him to finally express all the thoughts that had been locked away for years.

My mother corresponded with her cousin by letter for the rest of his life. She found him delightfully witty and possessed of a dry humor she adored. She sent him books and magazines and they discussed them.

In today's news, I came upon an article that made me really think. I have no answer for this situation. The mother of a 13 year old girl with cerebral palsy wants to get the girl a hysterectomy. The parents say the girl would not understand periods, cramps and mood swings. How do they know?

On the other hand, I consider my hysterectomy one of the best things that happened to me. I didn't want children, and it was causing me far too much pain with the endometriosis. The surgeons were overcautious in my case and unnecessarily delayed my surgery because they thought 25 was "too young" for a hysterectomy and I'd regret it when I wanted children. I am not in agreement with the prevailing attitude that women are baby-making machines and that every woman's highest goal in life is to produce a parasite from her loins.

C'mon, people, let's look at this scientifically. Instead of making it an emotional issue about taking away "her right" to decide, what is the real issue?

Looking at it as a practical matter, the parents are probably right: she would be far better off without the monthly cramps and periods. Her doctor should assess whether she could, physically, carry a baby. On that basis, a hysterectomy would be kinder than monthlies. If there is a possibility that, given a treatment for cerebral palsy in the future, she could recover the muscles to make a baby, then refrain.

Like many on my flist, I watched Ken Burns' series, The War. I grew up with stories from my parents about WWII. On my blood father's side, I had an uncle my mom never met who was killed at Pearl Harbor, but not in the attack. He died in a motorcycle accident. My blood father never saw combat, but had served as an airplane mechanic in Hawaii.

I can remember playing with ration tokens in my mother' s button box, and making cake with vinegar, baking soda and apple sauce instead of eggs and oil like they did during the war.

My Dad (my stepdad) served in the Merchant Marines. During every war since 1775, the Merchant Marines, normally a commercial fleet, have been pressed into service ferrying troops and materiel for US forces. The seamen who served during the war were given veteran status by the government recognizing their contribution to the war effort. But not my Dad. He was black, one of 24,000 African Americans who served in the Merchant Marines in all capacities except command. Black sailors were not recognized for their service nor were they declared veterans until 1988. Ken Burns did not address the Merchant Marines.

Notwithstanding, I did find that that Burns documentary was well done. It is far more an anthropology piece than a military history. There are certainly better military histories, but this was a very good depiction of the effect of the war on peoples' lives. The striking thing was the impact of the experience on the people at home. They were called upon from the very first to contribute, to cut back, to save and to ration. The war cut deeply into their everyday lives. They were asked to buy war bonds; to invest in the US knowing that when the boys returned, we would prosper again. Everyone had a part to play. Not only was it considered unpatriotic to speak out against the war, it was unpatriotic to profit from the war. People trusted that everyone was making the same sacrifices across the board. They were in it together.

We are continually exhorted to "fight the war on terror", yet, far from being called upon to contribute, we have been informed from the very start that we are all suspects; subject to detention without trial. We are searched at airports, surveilled, caught on film, our phones tapped without warrant. No one is above suspicion. We find that while our soldiers live in barracks and tent cities, they are paid half that of mercenary "private contractor" forces living in posh hotels. Mercenaries who were recruited from the armies of former dictators like Milosevic and Pinochet are making a profit from the billions of dollars that we owe China. Companies like Halliburton cannot account for millions of dollars they were allocated. Iraqi insurgents are killing our soldiers with guns we supplied them.

Yet when we question these expenses and actions, we are called unpatriotic. When our soldiers, exhausted and wounded from tour after tour after tour, begin to question the logic of staying in a country that does not want our help, their patriotism is questioned by people who have never served a single tour of duty themselves.

We, as a country, have been sold a bill of goods. We have been asked to pay with the blood of our best and mortgage our future and the future of our children to line to pockets of a few conniving scoundrels in the name of false patriotism. I challenge them to watch "The War" and learn what patriotism really is, then repeal the obscene "USA PATRIOT Act", restore our Constitution and begin an orderly withdrawal from the quagmire. Our forefathers are rolling in their graves.

A new pilot study suggests that a small daily dose of dark chocolate ( the sort with high cocoa solid content) can help reduce the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Hmm, I guess that means it was the Dementors after all.

Rush Limbaugh called American soldiers who question the US presence in Iraq "phony soldiers". Many on the Right are saying he was referring to the case of Jesse MacBeth, a washed out recruit who masqueraded as an Army Ranger (Rush and others have claimed that "the Left" was somehow complicit in MacBeth's actions. There is no evidence of this). But the transcript of the show clearly shows that Rush's coverage of the MacBeth case took place after his remarks about "phony soldiers". Anyone listening to the conversation up to that point would be forced to assume he meant soldiers with dissenting viewpoints. Because one person gets caught in a hoax, he generalizes that over all dissenters.

Rush Limbaugh's show is carried on Armed Forces Radio. Is this what our troops really need to hear? After such a big stink was made over an ad about General Petraeus in the NYT, why is this man allowed to broadcast this hate over Armed Forces Radio?

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that troops in Rangoon opened fire after protesters hurled rocks and bottles at them, killing a reported 10 individuals, one of whom is reported to have been a Japanese reporter.

Recall the warning that police might use the tactic of dressing up as protesters? How can anyone know who threw the stones?

The junta has now raided the monasteries in Rangoon and have imprisoned some 500 monks, as well as closing the Shwedagon Pagoda.

Democracy Now! is reporting this morning that cybercafes and mobile phones are being shut down in an attempt to stem the flow of videos and blog information about the protest.

They are also reporting that China has effectively blocked any UN action on the situation in Burma.

A burmese blog in Rangoon with video of soldiers shooting in the background.

This Burmese blogger has not updated since the 24th.

There is a movement on to Wear Red for Burma this Friday (tomorrow). Please pass it on.