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Flashback OT: 1911

On this day in history, 101 years ago, President Ronald Reagan was born. Today, 101 years later, we ran some interesting things on P*Mag. These events are unrelated. 

Not unrelated: What did you do today, Persephoneers? Tell Auntie Selena all about it, I’ll make some boozy cocoa and put some feel-good music on the hi-fi.

This song has serious creepy stalker undertones, but it’s so darn chipper.

By [E] Selena MacIntosh*

Selena MacIntosh is the owner and editor of Persephone Magazine. She also fixes it when it breaks. She is fueled by Diet Coke, coffee with a lot of cream in it, and cat hair.

72 replies on “Flashback OT: 1911”

It’s on Politico and elsewhere now as well.

One of the commenters on the Jezebel piece pointed out that if she hasn’t accepted a severance package (as she says in the resignation letter) she probably won’t have signed a confidentiality agreement either. Something to keep an eye on…!

I just got hit on by a hot Hungarian guy at the convenience store. Now, I’m happily retired from dating with the man of my dreams but it still feels good to be found attractive by strangers. In fact, it’s the first day of my cycle, I haven’t showered yet (it’s 5:45 pm), and I was seen holding cookies and a big bottle of soda. It’s a wonder that anyone could find me attractive under such conditions but the happy occasion is welcomed all the same! I hope you all get some good looking European boy to give you flirty eyes this week!

Busy day here. I made the mistake of sleeping in, and so by the time I finished my Bodyrock workout and showered, I had to rush to Planned Parenthood (I volunteer there) for a few hours of faxing and phone calls, then run back home to get some schoolwork done before class. It took the boyfriend taking me out for a bacon cheeseburger and a drink before I finally could relax!

And I get to do it again tomorrow!

So having been a relationship for the past year and a half, I’ve forgotten what it is like not to have someone at my beck and call for sexy times. I’m now on day four of no sex (after having sex every day pretty much for the better part of a year) due to being half-way across the country from my lovebug and I’m beginning to get a little crazy. How long does it take to get to a place where I’m not going bonkers from horniness?

Indeed. Skype and masturbation have been activities we’ve been partaking in, but there still isn’t (at least for me) as much satisfaction as being physically intimate with another person. Plus, there’s the fact that he makes me orgasm faster and stronger than when I’m alone using toys.

Oh well. It’s only a month. I can survive!

I searched for apartments. In Sydney, this is a daunting exercise. The competition here is FIERCE and the prices are astronomical. Average price for a 1 bedroom apartment in the inner city suburbs? $1,600 a month. The last time we showed an apartment for inspection, we had more than 80 people come through in a half hour–every single one of them took an application. It doesn’t help that we are looking at this time of the year; the Australian school year starts in 2.5 weeks so lots of out-of-towners are in town and gobbling up the apartments (and raising prices). I’ve heard of people baking cupcakes and taking them to realtor offices in hopes that it’ll win their housing application extra points. Lots of others offer extra money with their weekly rent in order to secure an apartment. It’s i.n.s.a.n.e. I think rental applications should come with depression hotline numbers at the bottom of them for when your spirit is eventually crushed and eaten by a real estate agent.

Yikes! And I thought we had it bad when we couldn’t find a place to move into with our cats (we ended up finding a lovely loft that let us keep our cats). I’d love to give advice, but I haven’t any clue about the Sidney housing market. I hope you find a suitable place to hang your hat!

Lawd, that is depressing. My sister was just trying to look for a 2 bedroom place in Christchurch. It’s basically impossible at the moment because literally thousands of houses have been condemned, and no one has been paid out yet to rebuild, so everyone is in rental accommodation. We looked for flats before the Feb 2011 quake in Christchurch, and it was really bad then. She lucked out and managed to get one through her old property agent, but she was really lucky. So I hope it works out for you, fingers crossed!

Home finally. I pretty much had to change tack every half hour as a new client come in or a new issue arose, so I went from the Student Loan scheme to debt issues to employment to welfare entitlements within about 2 hours and my brain hurts now. Then I forgot about lunch with my friend, which I feel awful about but she was good about.

But now Mr Cesy is cooking chicken saag and I am sitting on the couch and I won’t think about work any more for a bit.

I’ll have to grab that one next time. I saw grape, apple, mint, and a couple others but I don’t remember seeing blueberry. One thing I wish they’d had was the berry-flavored Pocky. I’ve only seen it once in J-town in SF. Every other store has only strawberry and chocolate.

I need emergency comfort food ideas, stat. Don’t worry, I already opened the wine.

It’s sorta gotta be dairy-free – because there’s no dairy in the fridge. :(

I swear to Bowie, if one more friend leaves town on the same weekend as my birthday, I will NOT be polite any more. I don’t even care. They all say they’ll make it up but I can’t bend my plans around for ALL of them. 8 people! 8 people that I love and want with me will not be in this state. And jesushchrist, single, turning 29 and with a Valentine’s birthday? There is not enough chocolate cake.

I want to pick a new birthday. Something in April. Or June.

Aw. Can I recommend frozen bananas/grapes/honeydew melon? I like to eat them drizzled in nutella. It’s like my own cold version of a fondue.

But I’m also kind of weird in that I think freezing fruit and juice makes it better.

I only have apples at the moment and they are all for my lunches this week. :(

BUT! I did find three things of non-cheese so I’m making a grilled cheeseish sandwich! And I’m going to switch from Drop Dead Diva to Deep Space Nine so that might help too.

Thank you all for your help and ideas. Now I apparently need to try frozen grapes. Do they get too hard and too frozen? I’m not the type to munch on ice. (I munch on steak…)

my only class was cancelled so I stayed home all day. the farthest I went was to the garage to take out the garbage. really should have gone for a run on account of the nice weather. I made buffalo chicken in the slo-cooker and discussed reproductive rights online with someone I really should stop talking to because he’s ridiculous. like, he actually said, “The most effective way to reduce abortions is to make them unavailable to the public.” and kept using this website called Johnston’s Archive when citing abortion rates by country (Johnston’s Archive is this Southern Baptist physicist’s website? with a link about “how to go to heaven”. it’s a treat)

he didn’t get the whole “illegal abortions kill women” thing at all. it was very weird: “Let’s say, in situation A, abortion is legal and X babies die every year due to being aborted. In situation B, abortion isn’t legal, and Y mothers die every year due to unsafe abortions. Is the number of babies killed against their will (X) still greater than the number of women who die due to voluntary back-alley abortions (Y)? If more children die in one situation than women would in the other, then even on the most coldly utilitarian basis, abortion isn’t worth it.”
I just shouldn’t bother, it’s frustrating.

Next time you should show them this article that says that abortion rates actually remain unchanged no matter the legality of the procedure. Though this more recent article says that abortion rates might be higher when abortion is illegal!

And I know how you feel about internet debates. I end up just throwing my hands up in the air and saying, “The world is doomed.”

I know, right?

thanks for the links! I sent him a couple of recent studies on abortion rates and legality from the Guttmacher Institute so we’ll see. he doesn’t tend to do well with facts and evidence that don’t fit into his already formed conclusions (which he gleans from top-notch people like Mark Driscoll and his ilk).

it’s kind of ridiculous too. because, I mean, I’m pretty sure we all want there to be less abortions, not because we want there to be more babies or more dangerous pregnancies, but because we think it’s a good idea for people who want to be parents to want to be parents? and preventative medicine is a really great thing to be able to access?

I’m trying to figure out an analogy for the anti-choicers who are also anti-contraception and who have this straw-woman in mind, who has sex outside of their enforced parameters and then is stoked about terminating the pregnancy. like, something about how if you’re lactose-intolerant but love ice cream and you can choose between taking your Lactaid and enjoying your ice cream or not taking your Lactaid and getting sick and having to go to the hospital you’d probably pick the former, but it’s not a very good analogy because there are lots of ice cream substitutes?

I’ve referred to it before, but would the Thomson essay on abortion help?

Also two stories about women who needed to terminate pregnancies for the sake of their health – sometimes personal stories make a difference (though, that said, this guy doesn’t sound like he’s open to actual facts and messy real-world problems).

When does “health of the mother” turn into “life of the mother,” anyway? What organs would the infection have to spread to and shut down before I would be permitted to terminate my pregnancy? Would they wait until I was on a ventilator, or merely until my lungs were beginning to fill with fluid?

This writer was pregnant with twins – one died at 22 weeks of an intrauterine infection and the pregnancy was continued until 26 weeks, when the infection began to spread. Her daughter, the other twin, survived.

http://flotsamblog.com/2008/10/16/more-wounded-that-eloquent-im-afraid/

Even if I tell you that late term abortions make up only one fifth of 1% of ALL abortions that happen in this country, and that they are performed universally only in cases of extreme risk to the mother or lack of viability for the child, you won’t believe me. In your mind, women like me are sluts that got what we deserve, and changed our minds at the last minute when the reality of a baby became clear. If I tell you that the day my doctor performed my life-saving medical termination of my pregnancy was the worst day of his professional career, in your mind he’s a callous murderer willing to kill children….

In my case, Senator, where would you have drawn the line? At what point were my doctors and I not stretching the definition of my “health”? When we terminated the pregnancy, or should we have waited until I was sicker? Say, when I lost my kidney function permanently? Or perhaps when I had a seizure so severe that it caused a stroke and brain damage? Or maybe when my heart was damaged by my out-of-control blood pressure?

This writer was also pregnant with twins but developed pre-eclampsia before viability. http://uppercasewoman.com/2008/10/16/dear-john-mccai/

 

 

I sent him the second story, actually. and I also said that one of the reasons I fight to keep abortion legal is so that if he and his wife are ever in that place where they have to make a hard choice that there actually is a choice to make. but when someone is very “abortion is bad. the end. there should be less of them. but people should only be sexually active when they’re married.” it’s hard to have any kind of productive conversation because they’re really not interested in, you know, actually reducing abortion rates, or facts or anything.

he actually just deleted our entire conversation too, right after I’d sent links from studies Guttmacher did about what kinds of social change reduce abortion rates. pretty much what you said: not open to actual facts.

I love this song. I know I say that every time it’s in the OT, but I love it.

Tonight I’ve cooked dinner, finished my last Pathology lab ever (Thanks God!), and did Board Prep for 2 hours with my study group. Now I’m curled up with my notes for a quiz tomorrow and season one of Downton Abbey. It’s a great day to be me. :)

I was a varsity ski racer in high school, so I am not used to bi weights or exercise more than squats on a bosu ball. I feel better, and I already notice a difference, but I am not big into the cult thing. I have a slim build, so we will see in a few months if I can gain any muscle.

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