There is a problem here.

So this is my morning.

I've got about a million tabs open with various news articles and bits of the H.R.3 bill, as well as twitter and a couple pro-choice blogs, and I just finished writing a very impassioned letter to my representative about said bill. And all this before getting out of my pajamas or the smudged remains of my (admittedly awesome) black eyeliner from last night.

Priorities.

I know I've been all about this the past couple days, but this is a very important issue, and one that can't just be swept under the rug and ignored.

Really though, the existence of this bill is a problem, one that I feel women everywhere should stand up and actively fight against. One of the most outrageous parts of it redefines rape in such a way that if a woman is unknowingly drugged or drinks too much, her rape will no longer meet the new federal rape guidelines. That means that if this woman relies on Medicaid coverage, she can no longer obtain an abortion. She would have to pay for it out of her own pocket, and the reality is that most people on Medicaid don't have the resources to be able to do that.

The problems go deeper than just abortion coverage though. Telling a woman that her rape doesn't meet a set of federal guidelines not only devalues the incident but also the woman. This is rape culture at its worst.

This is almost 160 men telling women that they don't matter.

That is the real problem here.

Guys, serious moment here.

In August, Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act", under which all federal funding for abortion would be outlawed except in cases of violent rape. It would also penalize private health insurance companies and employers who provide abortion coverage.

The Smith Bill would mean that women who are drugged and then raped wouldn’t get federal coverage for abortion. It also means women who are mentally handicapped, say with Down Syndrome or the like, wouldn’t receive coverage.

Whether you support abortion or not, saying that someone wasn’t raped because it wasn’t by force is a horrible thing to do to anyone. Rape leaves both physical and mental scars, and only giving credit to the physical ones is downplaying the damage.

And we don’t want to see a return to the days when abortion meant a back alley procedure and high risk of complications or death. The criminalization of what should be a legal service for those who choose to take advantage of it is crazy. If it were made nearly impossible to go to church, there would be public outrage, but the truth is that is a personal choice as well, one that the government shouldn’t mandate. There is only so much the government should be able to dictate in our lives and one of the things that should be exempt are women’s reproductive rights.

Ultimately, it is up to us to choose what we want to do with our bodies.

Lobster!

Hey guys, I made a lobster cake.


And then promptly cut its head off.

Writing

Back when I went to visit the Roc, I wrote a bunch in my little almost-moleskine with my hipster kid fountain pen. This is one of those.


Driving at night, you and the darkness become friends. You grow to recognize the different shades of dark: the almost black road ahead, broken by the intermittent flashes of reflectors; the muffled dark of the trees, every so often defining itself in the shape of a branch or a spray of spiky pine; the dark of the sky, a little lighter, broken by twinkling stars.

And then, out of the darkness, a puddle of light. Bright, jarring in its sudden intensity. A bevy of streetlights and signs, so many that your brain stutters for a second before it is all gone again, fading in the mirror behind you. Then it’s gone entirely and the world is a little calmer.

The radio fuzzes and settles, humming lullabies into your little island of dashboard lights and rushing wind.

Another car creeps up out of the night and momentarily you are no longer alone. The night has produced another island and as you pass there is a short-lived sense of companionship before you continue on into the darkness, alone again.

The music falters and regains its strength, singing sweetly comforting words, and the dashboard lights blaze on. Above, there is a fleeting streak in the sky.

Blink and you missed it.

Make a wish.

Keep driving.

Tumblr

I'm working on an in depth post for later this week, but this is just a quick update.

I'm now officially a hipster. I have a tumblr.

unasked.tumblr.com

Abby Noo Ear!

It's 2011! Yay!

I hope everyone had an awesome night on New Year's, I know I did.


So, for the last couple months I've been having problems with my laptop. It would over heat, or just plain not work. Last month, my DVD player quit on me. My dad was really awesome and bought me an external CD/DVD drive so that I could still use my laptop and not have to buy a whole new one, which I can't really afford given the whole moving across the country thing.

So yesterday I got back from my awesome New Year's celebrations and my laptop just wouldn't run. I'd get it started, and five minutes later it would click off after overheating. Well, crap. Happy New Year to me.

So, this morning, my dad and I began the very long and laborious process of taking apart my Toshiba Satellite, hoping that maybe we could just replace the fan. I should have taken pictures. For real, once we got it open, the dust bunny inside my fan was the size of a fingernail. Not a small one either; like the size of my thumb.

Tip: don't use your laptop while it's sitting on a fuzzy blanket. Bad news bears.

So we decided, just for the hell of it, to put it back together to see if the fan would work or if we needed a whole new one. Somewhere in this process, I switched around my memory cards. Remember this.

So, I restarted it.
WAIT.

The fan now works like a dream.

And, it turns out my primary memory card was corrupt.
So switching them made everything go right again.

That fancy new hot pink CD/DVD drive my dad was so nice to get me for Christmas?
Null and void, because my DVD drive works again.

My laptop works again, and works like a dream!

Happy New Year to me!

And all of you.

So I owe this to Jerz from last week

Well, Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone had a good morning and got all kinds of wonderful things. I know I did. My entire kit for culinary school is almost put together just from this morning!

Things have been pretty quiet here. I've been working with my dad and getting ready to move, which is going to happen sometime in February or March.
Today we're continuing our family tradition of going to see a movie together. We started it ages ago, when Lord of the Rings was coming out, and now it's a thing. We're going to see True Grit, which looks interesting if only because Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Jeff Bridges all look like twins in the previews.

Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful day with family and get to eat delicious food and be happy.