kmkat and her kneedles

Women.

"All my adult life, I’ve been pretty sure I’m a sentient, even semi-competent human being. I have a job and an apartment; I know how to read and vote; I make regular, mostly autonomous decisions about what to eat for lunch and which cat videos I will watch whilst eating my lunch. But in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude.

"You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as 'XX,' a deviation of the normative 'XY' pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway. This debate has reached critical mass, and leaves me uncertain of my legal and moral status. Am I a person? An object? A ward of the state? A 'prostitute'? (And if I’m the last of these, where do I drop off my W-2?)"

http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/07/subject-for-debate-are-women-people/

Ten on Tuesday, the happy music edition:

Ten Eleven Songs That Put Me In A Good Mood

1. Old Time Rock & Roll / Bob Seger -- I cannot sit still when this comes on :-)
    
2. Can't Find My Way Home / Blind Faith
   
   
3. Fields of Gold / Sting
    
4. Good Vibrations / Beach Boys
   
   
5. Five Years Time / Noah and the Whales
   
   
6. Shambala / anybody who wants to cover it
    
7. Anything by Queen
    
8. Love Lost / Temper Trap
   
   
9. School's Out / Alice Cooper
   
   
10. Bach Brandenburg Concerto #1 and #2
    
    
11. Big County  / Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
     
12. Don't Look Back / Boston

Lots of others, too many to remember...

Monday night bullets.

I have lots of little things to share. Tragically, many of them require photos, which I cannot upload because my camera cable is 75 miles away. Bullets will have to do.

• I have been back in Minneapolis at the salt mines* accounting job for four weeks now, which accounts for the shocking lack of real posts. 
   
• This situation will continue until some days after April 17. 
   
• Deal with it.
  
  
• My knitting has slumped to the purely mindless, a 31-stitch-wide Montego Bay scarf.
   
• That pattern gave me fits the first time I made it, but now it is just mindless enough. Really, how hard can a 2-stitch pattern be?
   
• Don't answer that.
   
• The yarn is the Alchemy Silk Purse that I thought was destined for something else.
   
• I realized since I wrote that post that I would get a lot more use out of a long skinny scarf than a triangular shawlette.
   
• Silk yarn is lovely to knit.
   
• Silk yarn is easily damaged by careless frogging or tinking.
   
• I don't care.
   
• Much.
   
• I have a nearly visceral urge to cast on some socks.
  
  
• Not gonna happen, though. I have forbidden myself to touch sock yarn until I finish this scarf.
   
• At the rate I am going that will take until sometime after April 17.
   
• Work is getting really busy. A week ago on Friday afternoon I ran out of work, so I put out an email to the managers I work for, alerting them to my availability.
   
• Guess what. I got more work.
   
• So much that I worked all this past weekend.
   
• And had to take off most of today because I had worked myself into a migraine.
   
• Silly kats never learn.
   
• The drain pipe between this house and the city sewer was blocked on Saturday.
   
• Ewww.
   
• Smokey and I spent Sunday evening roto-rootering it out.
   
• More ewww.
   
• It works now.
   
• :-)
   
• The house still smells.
   
• :-(
   
• The weather is nearly warm enough here for open windows.
   
• :-)
   
• Nearly.
   
• :-(
   
• On Sunday the only snow I could see in the city was a few scraps in places where 1, it had been piled up, and b, it was in the shade.
   
• Today even those had melted.
   
• :-)
   
• Nice weather is nice.
   
• Not for the farmers, though; we went into the winter in a drought condition and got only a fraction of the normal snowfall.
   
• Watch for food prices to rise.
   
• You heard it here first.

 Okay, enough for tonight. Morning always comes earlier than it should, imho.

* This is a joke and not at all fair to the job. I like what I do, my employer is one of the best, and, last but not least, they pay me almost as much as I think I am worth ;-) 

 

Who loves Rush? You will never guess...

email from ElderSon:

You know how Rush Limbaugh has lost more than 50 advertisers after
saying a vile, hateful thing that happily made a bigger splash than
all the previous vile, hateful things he's said?

(This is after all a guy who said:

"Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals
resemble Jesse Jackson?”

“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like
a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I
said it.”

[To an African American female caller]: “Take that bone out of your
nose and call me back.”)

It's gotten to the point that today (now technically yesterday), the
commercial break at the end of the first hour of his show was a minute
of dead silence:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203080008

Anyway, what sort of a company would choose right now as the best time
to start buying ad time from Rush Limbaugh?  What sort of company
would think that Rush Limbaugh's listeners are a good market for what
they sell?  Ashleymadison.com, the dating site for married people who
wanna cheat on their spouses, that's who.  Since this all started with
Limbaugh slut shaming, I think that's kinda priceless.  Now Limbaugh
refused to run their ads, but they responded by saying,

"We are in the business of selling affairs...And our audience is
absolutely his audience."

Sheep shearing: it's the latest... sport?

 

From the Wall Street Journal.

omg, it just keeps getting worse.

Remember Glenn Grothman, the Republican idiot who introduced the bill in the Wisconsin state senate to repeal our state's equal-pay-for-equal-work law? He just keeps having one good idea after another.

From an email I received today from a local Democrat:

Republican Senator Glenn Grothman, of Wisconsin, Proposed Bill to Make Single Parenting Child Abuse

Senator Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin) apparently introduced Senate Bill 507, which would declare single parenting child abuse.

Grothman also proposes strict cuts in programs that assist single parents with caring for their children, including childcare. He recommended that children spend no more than 40 hours per week in a childcare setting.

According to an audio video on Fox Radio, he targets mothers, wanting to educate them about “abuse and single parenting”, encouraging them not to leave their abusive husbands and go on welfare, telling them they would risk abusing their children to do so. He states that children in two parent households are at lower risk of abuse and believes women know when they are getting into an abusive situation. He believes women purposely have children out of wedlock and abuse their children. He also believes his bill will become law in two years, due to single mothers abusing their children and having children out of wedlock. He even stated that this is not a good reason for birth control for women and believes all women have access to birth control. He also believes women do not become pregnant byaccident. He blames women for the change since the 60s and we should educate women that leaving abusive men and becoming single parents is a mistake.

Thank FSM he is not my senator. Well, maybe not; if he were I could have the unmitigated pleasure of voting against him.

The experts speak.

Women's Health Experts Speak Out

100% of male experts agree: nobody knows more about women's issues like birth control than late-middle-aged men and the Republican party is well aware.

Thanks to k, who blogged this last week.

 

Ten on Tuesday: the purse edition.

This week's topic is Ten Things In My Purse. Since I haven't carried a purse, exactly, for several years, I shall tell you Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Things I Carry In Whatever Container I Have Hanging From My Shoulder (backpack, tote bag, whatever).

1. Wallet. I looked long and hard to find a wallet-like thing that has a shoulder strap. That way I don't have to carry my huge tote bag into a store with me. Wallet contains money, credit cards, and receipts.
    
2. Health and beauty department. This is a small zipper bag, about 4"x6"x1" that is stuffed with every personal care item I could possibly need (I dumped it out to take inventory): small mirror, lip balm, tweezers, dental floss, flosspicks, folding hairbrush/comb, migraine meds, toothpaste (but no toothbrush -- what was I thinking? oh, yeah, the toothbrush is in the glove compartment of my car -- don't ask), hand lotion, hand sanitizer, diamond emery board, wet naps, tiny mirror, Tums, breath mints, Alli, bleach/stain remover pen, and a Winchester pocket tool that has a scissors, knife, file, 3 screwdriver blades, a saw, and a bottle/can opener. I am prepared for anything.
    
3. Bottle vitamin C tablets. I carry this with me in the winter just in case I feel the first tickle of a cold when I am away from home. It is vital to start the vitamin C treatment immediately; six hours later is Too Late.
    
4. Bottle of ibuprofen. I take 800mg in the morning and at night, but recently started taking another 800mg at 2 pm. It makes a big difference in my pain level. I even set up an alarm on my work computer to remind myself to take them.
    
5. Bottle of prescription antiacid tablets.
    
6. A set of five nylon shopping bags in their  own tote bag.
   
   
7. Tissues in a knitted tissue cozy.
   
   
8. Mini flashlight.
    
9. Key ring with keys for house and various cars, plus a spare set of keys.
    
10. Lock de-icer.
     
11. Tape measure.
     
12. Eyeglass cleaner kit.
     
13. Emergency knitting kit. I never go anywhere without it, especially since it saved my bacon that time I was stuck in the elevator.

 

 

Did you notice what was absent from my list? Any kind of makeup or perfume or anything remotely frilly-feminine. If I could fit a hammer, a couple full-sized screwdrivers, and a pair of pliers in there without adding any weight, I'd do it.

A bit more on the that bill that repealed equal pay for equal work in Wisconsin.

First, read this if you missed it last week.

The bill to repeal Wisconsin's equal-pay-for-equal-work law was introduced in the state Senate last September by Sen. Glenn Grothman (R) of West Bend, a small city northeast of Milwaukee. (The link takes you to his web page, which includes his email address, his snail mail address, his telephone and fax numbers, plus his office address in Madison. Just in case, ya know, you wanted to let him know your feelings on the matter.) It was passed in the Senate with the vote coming down -- predictably -- along party lines; the same thing happened in the state Assembly last month.

Of course, there are still federal laws on discrimination and equal pay, etc., but this bill makes it impossible to file a wage discrimination suit in state court. A petitioner will now have to file in (an overburdened) federal court. Says State Senator Tammy Baldwin here,

"It is much easier for somebody who's been unfairly compensated to gain access to a state court than a federal court...It is something that if you want these laws to have meaning, they have to be enforceable. So I'm very disappointed with the Wisconsin state legislature. Yet another big step back for women. This is becoming a real pattern."

As far as I can tell, there are exactly two (2!) federal courts in the state of Wisconsin, one in Milwaukee (a seven hour drive from where I live) and one in Madison (a six-hour drive). There are 69 state courts in Wisconsin, one in all but three counties: the one in my county is exactly 6.7 (highway) miles away. That tells you how easy or difficult it is to file a wage discrimination suit this month vs. last month.

Hmmmph. If these people want to live in a Third World country*, why don't they MOVE to a Third World county... instead of trying to remake my state into one.  

*I was going to suggest Mississippi, but that would have been unfair to Mississippi.

Edited to add: The federal law, The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (1963! I bet a number of you were not even born yet in 1963!), says this:

"No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions..."

Sunday stunning.

 

Courtesy of blackbird's Middle.