Update for Mid-August

We are officially all moved in and very nearly unpacked. The bathroom is still all kinds of disaster. To top off the other problems, the shower faucet knob broke, so we have to turn the water on and off with a pair of pliers. Classy.

BUT, the kitchen is in cooking order. Last night BF made curry and this morning I'm baking up a Boston Cream Pie, and might attempt some bread later. It's cooled off enough that the oven doesn't heat up the kitchen too much.

Right now the boy and I are waiting on the sofa and loveseat, they should be here within the hour.

Next up in the kitchen is the pastry cream for the pie.

Later on I plan on curling up on the sofa with a glass of riesling.

And when I have some time to myself, I'm going to do some reading. This 'Women of Colour and Beauty Carnival' should produce some really good reads.

UPDATE: ZOMG, the pastry cream turned out so delicious. Why don't I make that stuff more often? Srsly, really, really good.

The 7 Deadly Glasses

Since my birthday on Sunday, I've been forced to abstain from alcohol. I hadn't realized how much I'd been enjoying sweet, sweet liquor until I was separated from it!

Saw these amazing glasses today and thought I needed to share. They are the work of an British artist and represent the seven deadly sins.

Definitely worth a click.

Wednesday Links

Many interesting articles on teh internets today. I'm in no shape to comment on any of them, but I want to share.

First, three posts relating to three speeches from last evening:

Baratunde Thurston's Analysis of McCain, Clinton and Obama speeches.

The Talent Show on Clinton's speech.

From the Jon Swift blog, a great look at McCain's speech.

Next, some opinion pieces about other aspects of the presidential race:


Juan Cole with different take on Barack Obama's role as a "first" president.

From Hyphen Magazine, an article about Geraldine Ferraro's continuing remarks on sex and race (and how she's really working some odd angles).

Tami on the treatment of Michelle Obama in the media, via Racialicious.

On having an invisible disability

Found some interesting articles on having an invisible disability. They mostly deal with invisible physical disabilities, but I found that they spoke to my struggle with mental illness as well.

First, "But You Look So Good, and 7 other things never to say to someone with an invisible disability."



From there I discovered this article, "Coping with an Invisible Condition".

This resonated with me:

People's expectations
Based on the well-sick-invalid framework, you are allowed to be sick or limited for a while. After some months, people will be expecting you to be back to 'normal' - that is, a healthy, fully productive state. If you are not, but you look ok on the outside, there may be misunderstandings, rejection. Some people judge you as lazy, exaggerating, or accuse you of faking to get insurance benefits or attention. Or they expect too much of you, overestimating your current ability. Dealing with people's misunderstanding and judgment, suspicions, and assumptions is painful. Having to justify your lack of productivity is an extra stress on top of having the actual condition.

As well as this...

Not acting sick
If you have a chronic, invisible condition, you have an important job: to look after yourself as well as possible. This will make you look better, despite your symptoms. You need to do this, because there is a cost for letting other people's opinions keep you from activities that give you health.

...It is sometimes a dilemma whether to make a point of "showing" your illness. You want to appear "normal" and to fit in, not stand out and be noticed. You also want people to recognize and understand your problems. Some people struggle with this.

Now that I am really wrestling with my illness, I am trying to be very in touch with all the stigma I feel about myself and what I am doing with my life.

I remember a conversation I had with someone last year, he said he thought that depression was a cultural problem in Western society, implying that I was not ill, just... just what? A malingerer? It was a very hurtful thing for him to say, but I also understood that it was said out of ignorance. It is true that we are, as a society, too eager to medicate regular sadness. But I feel the very real changes in my brain chemistry (or whatever the hell it is that happens to me), and I cannot simply choose them away. My condition is real. I'm fighting hard against so much and fighting hard to have a life I love.

Pam says it far more eloquently than I ever could

Pam Spaulding at the Blend takes on this latest mess coming from the Sen. Hillary Clinton camp. I have a difficult time explaining to people why it would be a kick in the ovaries for me to pull the lever for Sen. Clinton come November, but this pretty much is the last nail in that coffin:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Pam says, "Wow. Just. Wow..." and then breaks it down for us. Please go give it a read if you don't (or do) understand why the way the Clinton Campaign is being run is more divisive than it may appear on the surface.

ETA: Karnythia over at Angry Black Woman weighs in too. Check it out.

Obama won Texas

Although from what I've read, the delegates could get to the convention and vote however the hell they like, most people believe he wonthe most delegates, when his caucus numbers are added to his delegates from the voting process.

The race is closer than I'd like, but seeing as I heard first hand that Republicans were voting for Sen. Clinton in the open Wisconsin Primary, and anecdotally that they were doing it in Texas, I think her numbers could be exaggerated both here and there.

Aha! "Jack Turner" at Jack and Jill Politics posts a comment from a Texan on the ground with a compelling [yes, still anecdotal] story about Clinton votes by Republicans in Dallas.

One More NON Anecdotal story of Republican crossover, this time from Ohio. Check it out.

Fat, mad as hell, and not going to take it any more

Wow, I didn't know I had multiple mental illnesses. In addition to my bipolar/depressive disorder, apparently my obesity is a mental illness, to some.

To clarify, I am considered obese. At least, I think I am. I lost a few pounds so I might just be moderately overweight today. Let me go check my BMI...At 5' 8" and 203.4 lbs...30.9 - yes, I am obese today! Hooray. By 1 point. Which for me would equal 6.8 lbs. So if I ever get tired of being obese, I can just lose 6.8 lbs. AWESOME. And then I wouldn't be part of the [you know what, I'm not even going to say it - it's now Voldemort to me] anymore.

Apparently if I lost 6.8 lbs I would also cease to have the mental illness of obesity too.

All I can say to this specious reasoning is: what. the. fuck.

Fat is not a disease. Fat tissue has important jobs in the body, it is not poisonous. Some fat people have diseases. Some diseases are exacerbated by fat, some fat is exacerbated by disease. Fat is not contagious and it's not epidemic. Stop hating on fat people. Stop using us as political pawns. And stay the hell away from my children, who are healthy, growing boys.

I am sick of fat people being the butt of jokes on otherwise rational television shows (I'm looking at you BONES - stop it). I'm sick of people saying to me, "but look at all the people around" to justify the misuse of the word EPIDEMIC. I'm sick of so much time and energy being poured into shaming and mocking people under the pretense of helping them (I'm REALLY looking at YOU "America's Biggest Loser").

Anyhow, I've run out of steam (and no, it's not because I'm fat, it's because this subject both breaks my heart and makes me furious). But the fat hate has got to stop.

My life explained via an altered comic strip

garfield minus garfield is like looking into a mirror.

Semitic Semantics

Okay, the post title is kind of lazy (that is, not completely descriptive), but lovers of alliteration can see why I chose it.

Just read an interesting article by Professor Juan Cole, who is a Middle East expert and fluent in Arabic.

He writes about the ado made of Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, what it actually means and how he got it. He also compares this family name to other names of Semitic origin in America. It's an interesting article, and I encourage you to read it, especially if you are an entomology geek.

And at some point I will post something that doesn't relate to Barack Obama. At some point.

Some interesting perspectives on the upcoming election which I've read recently

First of all, I should say that I'm going to be voting for Barack Obama in the upcoming Wisconsin Primary. I'm excited about it, a little, although the overriding feeling I have about this election is still rooted in deep cynicism. I don't believe that the next four years is going to be good for our country (while we try to dig ourselves out of the bush/cheney hole), but it will be far better to have a human being in the White House.

My kids were the first people to convince me to stay involved (however peripherally) in the election. My youngest in particular is SUPER SUPER excited about Barack Obama. SUPER excited. Excitement is contagious.

I originally was going to vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primary, before he dropped out to concentrate on his congressional race, after which I decided to support John Edwards. Now that Edwards has dropped out I am firmly in the Obama camp.

This morning I read this article by guest blogger Naamen Gobert Tilahun at Angry Black Woman and I was struck by it. The "race" issue is why I have felt hesitant about saying I was gonna vote for Barack Obama.

It’s because I’m black.

See when I admit that I support Obama, people (mostly white) get this look on their face and that’s the end the conversation. They don’t ask why, they don’t start a dialogue, there’s just this look. The look is very much like a slap in the face. What the look says is “Ah, I knew you would”, “Of Course.”, “Well, I’m not surprised.”. The look rests on the assumption that as a black man of course I would be voting for the black man. It’s a racist assumption that insults not only myself but Obama as well. When we deconstruct the look there are two main attacks that are happening here.

Number one they are assuming that Obama has nothing to offer except being a black man, they are assuming that none of his politics matter that his only viability as a candidate stems from his race.

It's really worth a read.

Yesterday over at Racilious, various contributors gave their reasons for supporting Barack Obama. Some highlights:

Does Obama appeal to me because he’s multiracial, like myself? Because many of his relatives are Asian? Because in living abroad, he’s had the same international Third Culture Kid (TCK) experiences as me? In part, yes.

But what really excites me about Obama is that he is completely in touch with how race in America is lived in 2008. He understands that race is not just about who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor. He’s fearless about addressing institutional racism, but is absolutely uninterested in playing oppression olympics. His message is one of hope and change, yet he doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of racism or insist on engaging in meaningless celebrations of diversity. He proudly identifies as a black man, yet is committed to bringing together people of all races.

*****

Barack voted against the War in Iraq at a time when a substantial portion of America was convinced that going to war was the right thing to do. I greatly respect a leader who can see through the clouds of illusion that politics often create. And when it comes to foreign affairs in the Middle East, there is no better time than now to be incredibly diplomatic and make decisions with our country’s best interests in mind. Bombing additional countries won’t help the damage we’ve already done, nor will building additional military bases (which, as demonstrated in South Korea and Okinawa, can often lead to more problems with regard to security for the host nation’s citizens than before).

*****

He is willing to radically depart from the politics of fear that various people have used to justify the need for military might and instead work toward global community and understanding.

All of the people I've heard talking about why they are voting for Hillary Clinton are white women of a certain age [ETA: I can't believe I played the Race, Gender and Age cards here, I'm embarrassed]. I've listened to a fair amount of "progressive" or lefty radio the past two days. What I've heard is these women talking down to the strawman/Obama supporters, talking about how the young aren't the people we need giving us [older folks] advice about who to vote for, and how the message of "Hope" is somehow empty. REALLY? Thanks, but no thanks. Hearing crap like that will make it really hard to support Sen. Clinton if she indeed takes the nomination. I really don't want to grit my teeth and vote for another uninspiring candidate.

Sen. Obama is far from perfect. Face it, anyone who wants to be president has to have something wrong with them. But he's become my candidate. Because of the many opportunities this race presents me with getting really mad, I'll no doubt be posting here about this. It should be, at the least, an interesting year.

I can hear you smile

Here's an article about an interesting study documenting that we can hear smiles in other's voices. It also talks about different types of smiles (smiles which reach the eyes and smiles which don't).

A list

This isn't too bad a list.

Best of the Autonymph 2007: Film review

I was looking through my stats and saw that someone had looked at my Shrek the Third film review, entitled: A Third Dissapointment.

Shrek the Third is a technical masterpiece. I kept wondering at the texture of Shrek's skin, the different state of Puss in Boots fur, and Prince Charming's bouncy and behaving hair.

And for an hour and a half, I kept thinking about how white the world of Far Far Away is. Beside Eddie Murphy, there are no black voice actors in the film. Antonio Banderas (who is technically white, let's not forget) is the only other bit of colour in the acting roster.

And yes, I'm sure the argument that it's based on European fairy tales, so why not have all of the characters be European* looking will be put up against my complaint? Por que, you may ask? Why should they include non-white characters? Porque si. Just because. (*Also, Europeans come in many shades. See: Antonio Banderas.)

Reading that post again, it struck me that it was one of the best posts of the year here at The Autonymph. And although I don't think I have that many to brag about, I am going to look for one best of post a day for the next 4 days.

Another film review I think might be worth your time is here. It's about the Korean film "Gwoemul (The Host)" and explains it better than the trailers did (I was telling someone about this film a few weeks ago and thought I'd like to watch it again).

Take *that*, optimism

Optimism 'no bearing on cancer'

The power of the mind has been overestimated when it comes to fighting cancer, US scientists say.

They said they found that a patient's positive or negative emotional state had no direct bearing on cancer survival or disease progression.

The University of Pennsylvania team followed more than 1,000 patients with head and neck cancer.

But experts said the Cancer journal study should not deter people from adopting a "fighting spirit".


Cancer Research UK

Indeed, a positive outlook can help patients cope with gruelling cancer therapies and resume a "normal" life, a spokeswoman for Macmillan Cancer Support said.

Seeking emotional support may be beneficial to cancer patients, said the researchers.

I know it's important to have a good outlook for most things in life, and I don't think this study can allows us to conclude that we shouldn't care or be invested in positive outcomes, but as a life long pessimist (pessimism has actually been helpful at times, believe it or not), I feel a bit better about things, now that I have "scientific proof" of the overestimation of the power of optimism.

Jeez, I'm a bit of a curmudgeon on this point, aren't I?

It's better to talk about it

This is an amazing article (admittedly an angry article as referenced here) about the suicide of a part time public radio host in Seattle.

The author is a guy who lives with suicidal ideation and sees, as I do, society's silence on the matter of suicide as being harmful.

It's been terribly difficult to get people I love to talk to me about my suicidal feelings and impulses. It's terribly difficult to live with them, and then feel as though talking about them is as bad as acting on them.

Obviously, it's better to talk about it than to do it.

Right now I am NOT feeling suicidal (after two hellish and frightening weeks in which I actively planned my demise - but I'm a slacker and know I'm not that committed to actually dying anyhow, I just want the pain and fear to end), and the breathing room that affords me is definitely appreciated.

For a long time I saw my suicidality as a laziness or a habit, but now I am seeing it as something I may never have complete control over, necessitating a lifetime of vigilance over those impulses. It boggles the mind to imagine that many people have NEVER seriously thought about killing themselves, when I've thought about it on and off for 20 years.

That said, does my tendency toward this darkness and these self-destructive thoughts make me irredeemably mad? Obviously not. If I just kept my silence about all of the 'symptoms' of my mental and philosophical states, I'd seem like a quirky but relatively normal person.

But being shunned when I AM in these states only leads to darker more self-destructive places, and I refuse it. I really don't know where or how, but I feel drawn to sharing my experiences (although usually you don't get to talk about your mental problems until you have conquered them, so that might be tough).

update: I went away then came back and read this and realized it could be taken the wrong way - I'm just saying: this is not a subject which will go away for me and I am going to talk about it when I need to. I'm not airing dirty laundry or making accusations, just talking about my experiences and feelings.

The Black Dog/Necessary illusions

People who want to end it all have lost the necessary illusions that make life bearable; the sources of their pain are impossible to pinpoint but all the same infect the air they breathe.

Read this article about depression (sort of focusing on Owen Wilson, but not really).
Just go, then come back here and we can talk.
It's a great piece because it points out some little things I want to say but find difficult to articulate.

Aftermath

I was not as moved by the events of September 11, 2001 as it seemed I should have been. When the days events unfolded, I was starting a new temp job and along with everyone else in the building, trying to read about what was happening. It was incredibly shocking, and while I felt sadness for those who died, I just didn't feel it...personally, I guess. Afterward, my inherent fear and distrust of group think made me shy away from the patriotism stuff, and I wasn't willing to buy in to all the jingoism and hate-mongering (hatred for Arabs, Muslims, etc).

What has been far more moving than the actual events of that day (which were of course horrifying, I'm not heartless), is seeing the widespread aftermath. It's incredibly sad to see stories of the first responders and volunteers who are dying because of their exposure to the toxic materials resulting from the attacks. I've heard reports on Democracy Now! about the illnesses and deaths, about the difficulty of these secondary victims in getting health care and prescription coverage through their jobs or government agencies. In Sicko, a group of these first responders is introduced, and it's shocking how sick they are (and they are relatively healthy in comparison to some of their colleagues).

This morning I can't sleep and was reading lots of websites and I came across this picture:


EMT Marvin Bethea (photo by Allan Tennenbaum)

Allan Tennenbaum has a website with pictures of many first responders and interviewers with them (or their families). It's a must read. The page also links to a Time Magazine piece with audio of interviews from the series.

I write, therefore I am/Revisiting

Whenever I get discouraged by blogging, I find something which gives me hope or proof that my writing is doing work. Usually it's just doing work for me, but it's work all the same. Sometimes when I feel particularly adrift, I connect back up with something essential by reading my own writing.

Tonight I had cause to visit the archives of this very blog and I found an entry from October 2006 which really touched me. It's a review of sorts, of a documentary by British Actor/Writer Stephen Fry called "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive".

All day I've caught snippets on the web about Owen Wilson and his alleged suicide attempt. Perhaps that puts me in the mood to revisit the subject of mood disorders. Perhaps it's because I'm thinking of doing some outreach at school around the subject. Who knows.

In any case, I urge you to click through to that entry for some fair writing of mine and a review of a documentary you should watch if you can get hold of it.

"CARE turns down Federal Funds for Food Aid"

A very interesting article from the NYT about how CARE is moving away from subsidized food aid (which supports US Farm subsidies) toward other types of aid which support the growth of local economies (at least, that's my take from a cursory glance at the article).

Worth a closer look, but my time at the coffee shop is growing short, so I had to blog about it right away.

An excerpt:

MALELA, Kenya — CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

Walter Otieno, a Kenyan farmer, with his children in the small store he has been able to finance from his sunflower sales. More Photos »

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

The charity says it will phase out its use of the practice by 2009. But it has already deeply divided the world of food aid and has spurred growing criticism of the practice as Congress considers a new farm bill.

“If someone wants to help you, they shouldn’t do it by destroying the very thing that they’re trying to promote,” said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

Under the system, the United States government buys the goods from American agribusinesses, ships them overseas, mostly on American-flagged carriers, and then donates them to the aid groups as an indirect form of financing. The groups sell the products on the market in poor countries and use the money to finance their antipoverty programs. It amounts to about $180 million a year.

Homophobia Ruins Everything

One of the many generic insults I have for people is to call them a "mo". It's short, I think, for moron, kind of like calling someone a mook (which may or may not be a variant of the word "moke", which was likely used as a racial epithet a long time ago, but of course makes me nervous because words mean things).

However, I recently read an blog post which sadly makes my use of "mo" a bit more delicate - if only because it reminded me that some people use "mo" as short for "homo" as code for gay-in-a-bad-way.

Damn it, homophobes, you ruin everything.

---

For a long time I was aware of many parts, if not a large part, of what constituted hip hop. I knew people who were into it and gave me mixtapes, I listened to the Tribe Called Quest/Jungle Brothers/De La Soul/KRS ONE kinds of groups, and I watched BET. But that was a LONG TIME AGO. I have little idea what goes on in Hip Hop anymore, just as I have no idea who is on the top 40. And I'm not exposed to street level culture much at all, emo, hip hop, country, whatever, I don't have casual conversations with many people, and rarely do I talk to "the kids" these days, even at school. So things like "no homo" are just out of my range. I was really saddened to hear about it though, because GOD DAMN, we don't need that shit. Isn't it hard enough for men to be normal without having to qualify everything they do which might be interpreted as being nice to another man for fear they might "look gay"? Fuck. That. Shit.

This is article by my old school chum (and would be paramour, as he made my young heart flutter in 6th grade), Peter S. Scholtes interviews Tori Fixx, a queer MC in the Twin Cities.

And here is a great, "STFU" post directed at a particular subset of the hip hop crowd.

All I know is that my children are going to get an earful from me if I hear them calling things 'gay'. I hate that lazy kind of insult. I swear like a sailor, which is bad enough, but at least I keep it gender and race neutral. Damn.


p.s. Peter, email me the next time you are in town!