Livid and inarticulate: Planned Parenthood Funding Axed in Budget Cuts

The House voted today to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood.  The vote passed 240-185.  That means 10 Democrats voted for this?  Planned Parenthood (bless them, fund them, donate to them) gets one third of their funding from the government. And I never thought that I'd link to Fox News, but there's an article about how a proposal from Betty McCollum (D-MN) about cutting Nascar funding (WTF) was voted down, while cutting family planning funds down.  Drag racing up, women's lives down!  I'm trying to track down how representatives in Arkansas voted, but I know it's not good.  What can you do? Sign a stupid internet petition, write a real letter, call, show up in person with a sign? Right now, bills are being crafted that will make it ok for a person to kill a doctor for performing an abortion if that person is doing it to save the fetus's life [Update: it's gone now, but why did it exist in the first place???].  It is all I can do to not send emails to all representatives in AR that just say "YOU FUCKING SUCK".  I know it's not the end, but really? Birth control for horses, but not for human women.

Never let anyone say that there is no need for feminism anymore. Make them explain why.  Make them explain this. And this. And this.

Traveling Spouse blog lacking spousey or travely business

If the blog has been scattered, please forgive.  Right now, nothing bad and nothing great is going on.  J was given some great advice about industry jobs that made him really happy, and he's hard at work on his dissertation. PhD Comics are less depressing and more funny now.  SCOATS abides.

I don't know where my privacy line is right now.  I love writing here and it makes me feel better, but I also don't want to turn into an emotional-vomit blog, or say things to embarrass myself/J.  Telling him about the blog made me feel WAY better, because I was getting proud of it and wanted to share my happiness with him.  But now I've lost a little bit of that bitching edge and have become too un-anonymous to talk about more details without incriminating J.  No more talk about bosses or advisors, and sadly that could be really interesting.  Actually, it IS really interesting, but I'm playing it safe.

I will end this meaningless sorry I haven't been writing post.  Here's a shout-out to my favorite How to be an Adult blog, Adult Concerns.

It's just a shoe.

I'm now a hacker. All your crumpetroom are belong to ME.

I accidentally hacked into a stranger's gmail account yesterday.  Repeatedly.  But I had no idea I was doing it.

Years ago, I had an address that was just for event planning, and was set to re-direct to my commonly-used address.  I thought I would use that address for my new twitter account, but twitter said it was already used.  We'll say the address was crumpetroom@gmail.com (if this is a real address, please forgive me).  "Hrm... why am I using crumpetroom@gmail.com on twitter? I'm not even on twitter," I thought, and decided maybe I should check in and see what was happening.  Password denied! I don't know what harebrained password I was using two years ago, but nothing was working, so I tried my security question:

Does poop smell bad?

...yes?  Me and J and our old roommate were kidders, and there was no dearth of poot jokes in our home, but "Does poop smell bad?"  That's just not even smart.  I typed YES, which wasn't right, then tried NO.  Success!  I guess I was banking on someone unable to ever type a lie of that magnitude.  Or maybe I was just really confident at that time?  Who uses a yes or no answer for a security question? When you get two guesses?  This guy?

So I am in my old account, and there are no emails. No labels that I've made. People in the gchat list THAT I DON'T KNOW.  I went to the account settings and saw that it was re-directing to another email, so I emailed that person and told them I had filed a complaint with Gmail and he/she would be summarily booted.  Ha!

Soon after I receive an email:

I signed up for this gmail account years ago.  i'm not sure how you obtained access to it, but if you notice, the user name is K** ****, which is my other gmail account.

Oh, really huh? You think you can just squat in crumpetroom@gmail.com and make it yours? I've had that account for years... I... my.... my account was thecrumpetroom@gmail.com, wasn't it?

Yeah, I tried that, and got in immediately.  What I had done was hack into an innocent woman's email account and send her a menacing message, all because I couldn't remember that I'd put "the" at the beginning of the username.  Damage control!

OH MY GOD
I am so sorry.  I just figured this out. I was just a few letters off on the user name, which I haven't used in years.  Please forgive me.  But you really should beef up your security question to something that isn't yes or no.  I am not a hacker, but I was able to get in really easily.

 She was really nice about it, and responded with lots of Eastern emoticons (O.o) and said she figured I wasn't a hack from all my "nice little tweets".  I would have looked myself up, too, if some crazy person had commandeered my account.  Really, she was very, very kind about it, when she did not have to be.  Thank you, true owner of crumpetroom@gmail.com.  Oh, internet.

So, make sure your security password is not "Does poop smell bad?" and also keep up with what accounts you actually own.  And if you want to have more than one twitter account on one email, just put a period in there somewhere (cru.mpetroom = crumpetroom).  Twitter ain't that smart.

When I do something stupid, from now on it will be referred to as "going to the crumpet room".

Glee: Yer Doin It Rong

I'm a little late saying anything about last week's Valentine's Day episode of Glee. Not that anyone was on tenterhooks waiting on my grand decree...

Ashley Fink (Lauren Zizes) in the middle, with Chris Colfer and Amber Riley. Image from Wetpaint

I was a huge Glee fan during the first season, because they pushed some boundaries and introduced more diverse characters*.  Not as good as Huge, but still pretty dern good.  Sure, they did some questionable stuff, but how could you stay mad at a show with gay teenagers, ambiguous sexuality, plus size ladies, several differently-abled characters, teen pregnancy realism (sort of) and unbridled female determination?  Yeah, the second season turned around and slushied all of that (fat phobia, genderqueer hate, misogyny, slut-shaming).  Ok, perhaps that existed the whole time, but it felt like an envelope was being pushed right? Maybe just a small envelope?

Sometimes I find it mind-boggling how some jokes get through without someone calling foul, but entire plotlines? This episode found Puck, the bad-boy character, suddenly falling in love with the newest Glee-member, Lauren Zizes (played by Ashely Fink, from Huge!!). She's been a pretty fantastic recurring character though the show's run, but unfortunately the show's creators aren't content with her being an awesome, mouthy wrestler-lady, they have to always film her eating (close-up on her mouth) and milk the fat jokes for all they're worth.  They brought her on as a main cast member, but so far have made everything about her weight.

The show starts with Puck staring at Lauren while a voiceover says, "You can't choose who you fall in love with."  Really? That's how you're going to start this?  Would they have used that line if he was staring at Quinn?  First "ugh".

Lauren gets a main part in this episode, where Puck decides he wants her after she tells him she doesn't want him.  I immediately thought, is this supposed to be an interesting plot because he wouldn't normally go out with a fat girl?**  I felt really bad making that connection., but not so fast, brain-- he goes on to tell her several times he likes her because of her curves and body, even once saying he likes her despite her curves.  And then he serenades her in the choir room in front of the whole Glee Club-- with "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen.  I really liked this song until this episode.  The whole club was clapping along and having a great time, while Lauren sat silently.

The song ends and she tells him, "That was the first time anyone ever sang me a love song. And it made me feel like crap".  Ok, maybe someone will learn a lesson: like someone for who they are, not for their body type.  Don't reduce a person to a body part.  Don't tell someone they're attractive despite something you don't like.  Don't make your attraction sound like a kink (unless you're just going for some kinky fun times, of course).  They end up on a date by the end, but you never hear Puck say that he understands that she wants to be loved for who she is, not because he's suddenly curious about big beautiful ladies.

Fink peeking at other Huge cast members. Really, if you haven't watched this excellent, short-lived show, do so now.

Leslie at Two Whole Cakes (lovely blog) saw the song as awesome and empowering, and I'm glad that some good can come out of this episode that was played so cheaply for fat-laughs.  But I saw it as sexual tourism, not to another country, but another body type.  He's wowed by her body and the way she rejects him, and that just doesn't stack up very romantically in my mind.  He plys her constantly with food.  He assumes she doesn't want to go out with him because "guys like [him]" have hurt her before.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I wish some lesson had been learned, and that we don't have to wonder if Lauren is always wondering if he loves her as a person or a body.  But Glee isn't great on lessons, really. My favorite quote EVER about Glee's shortcomings is from Satah at This Ain't Living: 
SUGGESTED AD CAMPAIGN FOR GLEE: remember that one time you liked what we did? We take it back!

I've obviously been thinking about this awful episode too much, and should not be expending my valuable (limited?) thought resources on a teen musical dram-edy.  I want more diversity on TV where the character's non-white/hetero/thin/cis identity is NOT all the writers can think of.

And this is what he could have sung and it wouldn't have been as bad, but still pushing it:

*If I use any terms that are not ok, PLEASE TELL ME.  I'm not always sure, and I try to look everything up and get the terms right.  I'm not asking for a 101, just a helpful nudge.
**Don't think I'm fat-hating by saying that. In the context of the episode, with the writer's obsession about her weight/eating food, it's obvious that's the direction they're taking. And in 2011, it's just sad that this is still how TV works.

New planet? Scientists debate whether or not to "friend" Tyche

[This post was supposed to be posted yesterday, but blogger was futzing. So I'm still in the 28 days of blogging race!]

I know this isn't a science blog, but I read about the possibility of a new planet beyond Neptune and the anthropomorphizing in the article made me chuckle. Words like "hiding" and "hidden" made it sound like a sneaky little planet, so I drew a masterful picture in MS Paint:

Tyche creeping on Neptune and Pluto

The article described it as "hiding in the Oort cloud", reading, but not commenting on Neptune's blog, and checking out Pluto's Facebook profile every few months to see if her Planet status has changed.

Progress! Hope! Will the Traveling Spouse travel soon?

J had a meeting with a prof that knows a thing or two about professional development (this kind of person does not exist in his own department!). The prof laid some truth down on him: that it's perfectly sane to look at industry/government jobs; get your dissertation done, like yesterday; send out 100 applications, no joke. It's kind of daunting, all this work outside of finishing his dissertation AND defending/teaching/advisor-wrangling, but I haven't seen him look so optimistic in a long time. I will be seeing less and less of him for these next few months, but I am so happy for him (and us).

And then there's the iceberg that I've been turning my head away from: how long will it take to find a job? The economy is getting better, but I'm not going to kid myself. I could be working my current job for another year while he tries to find something. I am so tired of people asking me when we're moving, or having to turn down an opportunity because "we're leaving soon". I need to stop living life like I'm about to move, but that gets harder as time goes by. I try not to think about the things I've passed on because of "leaving".

Maybe I should go crazy and start looking for another job? No, that's madness. I'd rather tough it out here (I'm obviously good at that- toughing it out) than mess with another company by getting trained and then leaving. The least I can do is not put anyone out.

Or is that kind of attitude why I feel so resentful?

Secret Confessions now on Twitter

Hands Occupied suggested I get a twitter account, so here I am.  I'm really terrible at design, so please don't vomit when you see my profile page.  I am not quite sure what to post there other than when I have a new post up, or articles concerning the traveling spouse, but I promise you won't be inundated with a live-feed of my feelings.  Also: Wife in a Suitcase? That does not help my negative feelings about all this. At least she isn't in several suitcases.

Thorn in my side

When I decided to start this blog, I first did a lot of googling to see if any existed.  Yay! But no. Most of them either have not been updated in years or are about the trailing/travling spouse subject only in title.  I just spent an hour combing through Observations of a Trailing Spouse to find only a handful  of posts that had anything to do with trailing.  Hrmph. How do I make my blog come closer to the top?

Maybe I'll post an all-memes-in-one image:

from huffingtonpost.com

Come to me, my pretties!

Academia to Industry

J's been thinking about the possibility of moving his attention to industry or government jobs instead of academia.  There's lots of good reasons for this, and most of them mean that things will be better for me (except for the possible cheap tuition), but I got incredibly freaked out.  He says there's no way he wouldn't finish his PhD (too damn close) but the seemingly sudden change from life in academia to "What would it be like to work at Mac?" at first seemed like an odd lapse of attention.

We had a friend who got married. Less than a year later that friend decided he was gay.  That freaked me out too, because nobody had any idea! These things coming out of nowhere, when you think you really know somebody, things that change the game plan, this is the feeling I got. The, I-can't-control-anything feeling.  So, even though Industry gives us better options, I couldn't shake the feeling there had been a bait-and-switch.  Why had I been waiting around all during grad school?

There wasn't really a fight, just me wailing and throwing out some tired whining about tying myself to someone and following for the rest of my life (yeah, find an answer in there that you can live with).  If Industry is such an option, why was this the first time we'd talked about it?

It also made me realize that a lot of things I get angry about, information I was never given, wasn't necessarily information he had at the time.  When we got married, he never thought it would take him over six years to get a PhD.  All the sweet things he told me, he really believed.  It was my fault for believing it and not doing my research.  I also realized that I am SO LUCKY that I didn't have the drive to go to grad school.  I'm not that guy.

Ugh, cans of worms over here.  Lots of love and devotion, but a whole lotta worms.

Happy Valentine's Eve!

[UPDATE: I just wanted to make sure that the anecdote about the friend coming out was not to say that coming out is horrible, but the situation was an unnerving surprise.  Everyone wants the one they love to be truly happy, but my heart breaks for her every time I think about it.  It's hard not to think about how I would feel in that situation.]

Too emo to live!

I erased that last post, because that's not what this blog is. This is a blog about being awesome and figuring stuff out. Plus, 30 minutes later J and I were snuggling and eating ice cream, and talking about awesome things we will do in the future.  I got no time for whinin' and shit.

Here's a picture of a dog in the snow, since that's all that's in my Facebook feed and I guess it's what people like.