Sunder Says...

The first Monday of a new year should be called, oh, Ultimate Monday, or something. Especially if it is also the first weekday of the new year. The Christmas just past refuses to go 'way, though. The gift to one of my godsons is still in Hilbert Space, courtesy of the US Post Office.

And I suppose I really should take the decorations off the tree.

In honor of my recently-acquired second job, which is based out of Seoul, S. Korea, I attempted to install a KST clock in my journal. Couldn't get it to work, evidently because it requires iframes. When I pasted the code into the HTML entry-formatting, the clock appeared in the rich text entry-formatting, but not in the preview of the entry. If anyone knows how to make such a clock work here, please leave a comment. I tried to use the free clock available at timeanddate.com.

Anyway, I'm editing papers, each of which is due (in the office, which is in Seoul) by a certain date. However, the time zone difference, plus the fact that the US goes on Daylight Savings Time while S. Korea is far too sensible, can make it confusing to figure out exactly when a given assignment is due, my time. I wanted the clock so I could see exactly what time it is in Seoul at any particular moment here, thinking it would be easier than counting on fingers.

For the rest, house purchased, move completed...and then the recession comes to my part of Seattle. Nice. Hence job # 2. At least it is interesting. Plus, I feel quite cosmopolitan, getting paid in won.

In an attempt to do a better job of keeping up with friends and vice versa, I joined the Twitter stampede, then got this second job and haven't even had time for tweets. Sigh.

Eee. It's been that long since I posted? Sorry 'bout that. Trying to accomplish the house-buying thing in the current economic climate is like driving on a road that is Under Construction. With lanes out, barrels missing, and people in orange vests giving you conflicting instructions. Oh, and did I mention the stuck accelerator and the air in the brake lines?

Anyway, was moved to post, despite having approximately thirty other things I really ought to be doing, by--

*trigger warning*

--Emily at "Hear Me Roar," who notes a disturbing trend in the media--a tendency to categorize bizarre, sick, twisted, and plain psychotic crimes that were committed by men under some type of "Weirdness" heading when the victim is a woman:  "As if the murder and terrorizing of women is something novel or interesting..."

She then links to, and summarizes, an article about the trial of 28-year-old Thomas Lee Rowley, who repeatedly stabbed a woman he'd once had a relationship with, claiming that since he'd paid for her breast implant surgery, that those parts of her body were his property, which he meant to reclaim. One of the most revolting aspects of the story is the way it's been reported. She uses the example of MSNBC, who filed this one under...hate crimes? Sexual assaults?

No such luck. Placing the story in either of those categories would imply that the victim was fully human. Instead, it was filed under "More From Weird News."

(Excerpt from Hear Me Roar: A Feminist Blogs for Choice, Freedom, and Empowerment for Women and Men.)

I thought about it, after reading the post and the article it links to. The problem with being a feminist in a patriarchal culture is that there is so much institutionalized misogyny that one can sometimes even see it where it isn't (it's called a "target-rich environment.") Suppose a man assaulted his brother, who'd had a serious falling-out with him, and slashed him about the head and face, claiming that because he'd paid for the brother's hair implants, he was entitled to take them back. Would the MSM report that in "Weird News"? Or would it be taken more seriously? It seems to be that I have, in fact, seen similar crimes categorized as merely "weird," but if I were put on the spot to name one, I couldn't. Anybody out there with other examples? Counter-examples (i.e., male perp., female victim, and a twisted or psychotic crime reported with appropriate grimness)?

And can anyone come up with a better analogy, one in which both victim and perpetrator are male? There's no point just switching the gender roles, because we already know that any story in which the crimnal is female and the victim is male is automatically funny. But I don't like my analogy, and I think there's probably a better one out there somewhere.

Just trying to make a little sense of it all...

I've known the "War" on Drugs was a bad idea ever since my career as a substance abuse counselor. True, I went into the job with the opposite attitude. It took only a year of the courts and/or law enforcement making my job significantly harder to change my mind. (For the record, the various problems were not the cops' faults. They were doing their jobs. My opinion of the judges, who had much more latitude in their actions, is less charitable.)

But this article--

War on Drugs: The Collateral Damage

--does a very nice job of summing up, in three pages, why the "War" on Drugs is failing, exactly what it is that is failing, and how much damage is being caused by the chronic and inevitable failure.

The only things I can add are:

(1) I think they are wrong about people having merely attempted suicide due to inadequate pain control. About five years ago, I read in a reputable magazine, which was written for the layperson, that there had been at least one documented suicide who left a note stating that he had killed himself due to his pain doctor leaving her/his practice (due to an investigation? can't recall). The note said something like, "It's not that no one else can help me; it's that no one else will." I would not be surprised to learn that there have been more suicides of people who simply couldn't face a life of relentless, hopeless pain.

(2) The article does not dive deeply into organized crime's role in the "War" on Drugs. I have long suspected that many anti-legalization campaigns are funded by organized crime, without the campaigns' knowledge. Obviously, every time a drug is legalized (making it significantly easier for those addicted to that drug to be successfully treated), drug dealers' profits drop like proverbial rocks. I could wish that the article had gone further into this topic. If anybody out there knows of any research that has been done on organized crime's efforts to keep drugs illegal, please post a reply about it. We already know, thanks to Ralph Reed, that gambling operations will try to protect their profits by donating money (to, say, the Christian Coalition) to oppose any nearby efforts to legalize further gambling. Therefore, the idea of organized crime doing something similar to protect drug profits is not far-fetched.

So far, the USA has declared war on a collective noun (drugs) and two conceptual nouns (poverty and terrorism). Perhaps it would be less damaging to shift our focus to an abstract noun. Any ideas? What abstract noun is so heinous it deserves to face the full force of our military?

On a personal note, I would also appreciate hearing from anyone who knows how to make the LiveJournal trackback feature work, as it has frustrated me so far. Thanx.

You've got to take a look at my unique pet. Bet you don't have a pet landfish running around your place! He's absolutely adorable. But before you scroll down to the picture, I must explain where he came from...

I have something of a hate-love-hate relationship with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, aka PETA. There have been times when they drew appropriate attention to the inappropriate treatment of certain animals by certain humans. At the same time, their occasional forays into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land make me want to run down to their headquarters and find out where those crazy kids have stashed their one-and-only grownup, presumably now bound and gagged. There are also times when their support is the last thing an organization wants. When I belonged to the county Humane Society back in Georgia, we had to spend time and energy explaining to citizens that we weren't connected with PETA, we weren't anti-hunting, or anti-meat-eating, or anti-gun, or anti-research. This was time and energy we could have spent on educating pet owners about low-cost spay/neuter programs and suchlike. So, for the most part, I can take or leave PETA with an emphasis on "leave."

I'm sure the feeling is mutual. I am a meat eater and a hunter, and in the past I have worked as an animal lab technician, where I was responsible for (among other things) humanely killing certain lab animals.

True story, which I dare now tell only because the statute of limitations has long expired: every profession has its own jargon. The animal lab was no exception. The slang term for humanely killing a lab animal was "sack." This was not a black-humor-type reference to losing a job; it was short for the correct jargon, "sacrifice." Here's how it works in a sentence:

"When we sacked those five rats and examined their brains, we saw that the transplanted tissue had survived and had produced minimal, if any, scarring."

Yes, the lab where I worked was experimenting on brain tissue transplants! The failure of brain tissue to regenerate is the cause of much hardship among both humans and pet animals. The professor whom I principally worked for was trying to get transplanted brain tissue to not only survive, but function. To see whether the tissue was functioning or not, he transplanted the brain structure that is responsible (in the rat) for sexual behavior. If a male rat received a transplant of fetal brain tissue from a female, and then began displaying female sexual behavior, one could infer the transplanted tissue was functioning.

Anyway, the transplant recipients were male rats, and the tissue donors were female fetal rats. Since the lab bred its own animals, these experiments once resulted in a severe overpopulation of adult female rats, since the breeder rats stubbornly refused to cooperate with the professor's need for predominantly male litters. Finally, the day came when it dawned on the absent-minded professor that the lab was feeding and housing a large number of totally unneeded adult female rats. He told me (and this is a quote), "I want you to sack all those rats" (pointing to about fifteen boxes of surplus animals.

Well, if you were only making minimum wage, what would you do?

The rats were really quite calm about being put into sacks, and the credit I received from the pet store took care of my own pets' needs for quite some time. Moral of the story: if you are a professor, don't just lab technicians by their pay scale.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about how PETA gave me a new pet, thanx to their new campaign. Here's the campaign--

NPR: PETA Attempts to Make Fish More Adorable "Sea kittens" is the new term being used by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for the creatures they believe are in dire need of an image makeover: fish...PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne says..that rebranding fish as sea kittens was obvious...Byrne says that even if people lose jobs in the fishing industry through the success of the campaign, they could find work in more sea-kitten-friendly environments.

I also found this--

PETA: "Sea Kittens" will make you stupid

I went to PETA's web site, which seems targeted at young children. The interactive "Build Your Own Sea Kitten" game includes as one of the base forms an anatomically incorrect flounder--its eyes are on different sides of its head. More significantly, the site erroneously attributes higher levels of intelligence and social interaction to food fish species than they actually posses.

At first, I was merely annoyed with PETA. Aren't there enough dogfighting rings to be stopped, hundred-cat-households to be investigated (and the cats rescued), and the like, that they could focus their time, energy, and resources on? I mean, really, PETA. Whitefish High School in Montana is as likely to change its name because you ask as the Mideast Terrorists are to stop using "suicide donkeys" because you ask.
This is a waste.

But then I looked around my house (okay, it's really just the bottom floor of a house) and I saw him. Thanx to my new way of looking at things, courtesy of PETA, I realized that I had a pet like no other, a pet of a species I'd never owned before. Amazing what a change in perspective can do! I owe PETA an apology.

Without further ado--by the logic imparted to me by PETA, here is my landfish:

Wow, what a long gap. As I mentioned before, when you have time to post in your LJ, nothing much is happening. When life gets interesting, there's no time for LJ. I stayed off of LJ for so long that I had to figure out how to get back into my account. I thought I'd saved the password in an online storage account, but couldn't locate it.
So, here's the catching up. The month after my last post, I entered into a long-distance romance with--my best friend. This despite warnings from other well-meaning friends that one should never become romantically involved with a really good friend--the kind who will not only help you move but will also, if necessary, help you move a body. Those kind are too precious to risk to a love affair, with the accompanying risk of disappointment. In the event it doesn't work out, one has lost not only the love interest but also a true friend. No one has enough of those (true friends) to able to spare one.
Anyway, I ignored the advice, and was grateful that I did. In September 2006, my dog Pogo was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had surgery to remove the tumor in November 2006 (during which time Jett and Maggie pulled another escape, and terrified me again. They came back--long story, to be revealed in detail later). I needed all the emotional support I could get as I helped Pogo fight for her life.
My boyfriend and I became engaged in March of 2007. Now, when I said this was a long-distance relationship, I meant it--he lived 2600 miles away, in Seattle, WA. We discussed the situation and decided that it made sense for me to sell my house in GA and move to Seattle. My employer, an attorney, downsized his office and eliminated my position in July of 2007. Luckily, I soon found a much better job, as staff writer for a counseling service. My parents agreed to buy my house in September of 2007 (I gave them a deal, of course).
On 31Oct07, my fiance (who has posted as JMA on this LJ) and I were married inside the cave at Cave Spring, GA.
We continued to live apart after our honeymoon (in Kent, England--a lovely place) because my parents reneged on our sale agreement and decided not to purchase my house after all. I had to put it on the market. Obviously, this ran me into the housing bust. If they had not entered into the agreement, I could have sold it while it was higher in value.
All this time, Pogo had continued to scrap with the cancer. She was still enjoying life--exploring, snacking on her favorite wild cherries, and schmoozing with my next-door neighbors--up until the last week of November, 2007. Then, quite suddenly, it was as if she made a decision. "OK, I'm done here. Love you, thanks, and goodbye." She went downhill rapidly. I had the vet come out and euthanize her at home in December of 2007, before she actually began to suffer. Some nice chaps from the city road department came out with a backhoe and dug her grave (no charge), just as if she had been a human.
In March of 2008, the counseling service had to restructure due to some financial difficulty. It eliminated the staff writer position. I already had a part-time job as a tutor (English composition), and I was approved for unemployment benefits, but my husband and I decided enough was enough. I left my house empty (but with a caretaker!) and shipped everything I wanted to keep to Seattle.
Then, one morning in late April, 2008, I packed myself, my three dogs, and some luggage into my purple Saturn and set out to drive 3000 miles to Seattle, WA. It was an adventure, which I shall likely write about at some length later; however I don't think I want to do it again. I may say, however, that Jett, Maggie, and Holly behaved excellently on the trip, by dint of sleeping a lot.
Since I arrived in Seattle, my house has sold, I've continued tutoring, the dogs have adapted, and I finally sold a work of fiction! Arkham Tales (http://www.arkhamtales.com) has purchased one of my short stories. It has not been published yet, however, any and all persons reading this should check the magazine out anyway. It's a freeview magazine with very professional standards (paying real money, not "$10 and a copy of the issue") and well worth your while if you like fantasy, horror, and/or the Cthulhu Mythos.
I plan to get into serious blogging in the new year and maybe even try creating a Web comic. Anyhow, I'm back! Feel free to contact me--especially if you missed me.

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For the past month two of my dogs, Jett and Maggie, have been devoting their many hours of free time to figuring out ways to escape the fence. First they went under in the back, at a new place along 100' section that I need to re-secure. This would let them into the pasture. The pasture fence wasn't secured at the bottom, so out they would go.
Maggie always follows Jett, so I started tethering Jett when I was home, and keeping her in the house when I wasn't. She also had to stay in the house at night. Meanwhile I started re-securing the 100' section, but it was slow going.
Jett eventually expressed her opinion of staying in the house. On Memorial Day I walked to the store, came home, and was greeted at the gate by Jett. She had gone through a screen on a lower window.
Tuesday when I left for work I made certain only the higher windows were open, except for one in a back room. I just closed off that room. When I got home from work, there was Jett, at the gate.
I don't know why the miscreant is alive! When I went inside I found that she had:
Clawed up several window sills
Cracked a window
Broken a window
Clawed the molding away from the door frame
Gotten into the back room
Torn out the screen in the back room window
Gone through the back window, and out into thin air. Due to the house being built into a hill, the back of the house is two stories.

I examined her and discovered she was somehow undamaged. In fact she seemed proud of herself. When I called the vet, Dr. Jason said that unless she started running a fever or something, she would be fine.
Until I found someone to secure the bottom of the pasture fence, my life became a series of silly maneuvers dedicated to restraining Jett while keeping her from doing further damage. The pasture fence was completed last weekend. Everything was fine.
Then Tuesday I took Jett for a walk and Maggie got out.
After screaming, collecting Maggie (with the help of neighbor Carole), and tethering Jett, I walked the pasture fence. All secure. I thought perhaps she had gotten out of the front, near the water meter, so I put cement blocks in the way.
Wednesday, Maggie and Jett both got out while I was at the law office. They came home. I put them in the basement.
Thursday, Maggie and Jett both got out while I paid the water bill. They came home. I checked the fence again--no breaks, no holes--and put them in the house. As long as I was present, they didn't destroy anything. The campaign was obvious--I was not to leave, or they would escape somehow!
Friday, Maggie and Jett both got out while I was at the law office. They came running home the moment I called, as if they were waiting nearby to be let in. I added another cement block, as I couldn't figure out where else they could possibly be escaping. Later Friday, I took Jett across the street. There seemed to be a crying kitten in the old shed on the vacant lot, but I couldn't find it. Jett would probably find it (kitten would have been in no danger from Jett). We failed to find the kitten--because Maggie came galloping up!
This time I did a lot more screaming. Then I collared the dog, who looked very puzzled, and went to talk to Carole. We replicated the circumstances, except she watched Maggie from just out of sight while Jett & I looked for the kitten. Same song, second verse.
With one leashed and one collared dog, I returned to Carole, who admitted she hadn't actually seen Maggie get out. However, Maggie had definitely escaped at the gate itself, and she had not gone over it.
Searching, confusion. Could she possibly have pushed the halves of the chainlink gate apart enough to squeeze through? Didn't seem too likely.
Then I poked the bottom of the gate.
The chainlink pulled away from the frame of the gate as if it weren't attached. I hollered "Eureka!" which puzzled Carole because she doesn't speak Greek. Then I pointed to the gate. Somehow the furry little creeps had worked most of the fasteners off the bottom of the gate. All they had to do was push. The chainlink would give, they could slide through, and the chainlink would spring back into place--no visible gap.
I have now secured the bottom of the gate with artfully twisted coathanger wire, until such time as I can get proper chainlink fasteners. So far, the fur folk have all stayed put.
Next step: repair devastated living room.

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The problem with most of the "solutions" currently being proposed for the illegal alien problem in the USA is that they (1) fail to define said problem, therefore (2) they cannot work. You can't solve the math problem "2y + 7 = 3y" if you define "+" as "an avocado."

Start with the fact that no Americans are incensed at the 25,000 Irish who are in the USA illegally. Americans are incensed at the unknown, but gigantic, number of Mexicans who are in the USA illegally. Furthermore, said Mexicans are, in large part, not illegal "immigrants," because few are interested in becoming American citizens or permanent residents. Most are here to make money, a great deal of which they send back to their families--the families they will eventually rejoin. A dollar goes much further in Mexico than in the USA. A savings of $30,000 will last a frugal American family with zero income perhaps two years. The same sum in Mexico will enable a family to potentially achieve permanent prosperity (or as permanent as any such thing on this globe can be), opening educational and opportunity doors that would otherwise remain shut. Plus, the border crossing is hard enough on the able-bodied. Is the hardworking family man from Mexico going to ask his wife, with their little children, or his aged parents, to make the same crossing? Or is he going to return to them after having built up what will be, for Mexico, an admirable nest egg?

So there really is no problem, is there? Eventually, Juan will go home to his family, saving the INS the cost of deporting him. Erm. One small difficulty with that idea. The same day Juan goes home, Julio makes the crossing into the USA. And if US policies remain unchanged, Jorge crosses with him.

Then, look at the other philosophy that says, "there is no problem." I'm talking about the folks who claim that illegal aliens from Mexico don't deprive American citizens of jobs. Rather, the USA needs such people to do the work that Americans won't. Working all day in the produce fields, cleaning chickens in poultry processing plants, building houses, working for lawn-care services, and so forth.

It is easy to see how correct they are. After all, think about the early-mid 90s and before, when the numbers of illegal aliens (Mexican and otherwise) were much, oh very much, lower. In those days, all produce rotted in the fields because there was no one to pick it. Grocery store shelves were bare of lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, citrus, etc., as well as completely lacking in processed chicken. And not a single house was built, which was just as well because there would've been no one to make the lawn look nice.

Right.

Here then is the actual problem: Mexicans are illegally entering the USA to work because the employment situation in Mexico is dismal--even worse than in the USA. The employment situation in Mexico is dismal because the people who have the greatest stake in demanding change from the Mexican government, and the greatest chance of getting it, are coming to the USA instead. They come to the USA instead of demanding change because it is easier. It is easier because the government of the USA has chosen to let it be easy to enter illegally, and easy to find work that is better than what is available in Mexico, even if one has entered the country illegally. The US government has chosen to let it be easy to do these things (take a look at the INS budget and policies, then take a look at the most recent budget passed by Congress and signed by Bush, if you need proof) because American elected officials and their flunkies wish to keep American wages low. These persons wish to keep American wages low because low wages bloat stockholder and corporate executive profits, and said persons themselves are stockholders, corporate executives, and/or beholden to (in the pockets of) same, and/or plan to become same upon getting re-elected enough times to acquire corporate value.

And now, the last bit, the piece that is the keystone of the entire problem, and therefore reveals the solution: Illegal aliens keep wages low because when they are paid below minimum wage, injured by unsafe working conditions, or otherwise ill-treated, they have no means of redress, for if they speak up they will be deported.

Pull out the keystone, and the arch collapses. "Be it resolved..." heck, I'm not gonna try to put it in legalese. What is needed is a US Federal law granting all workers the same access to the courts, and to agencies such as state Departments of Labor, Wage and Hour Boards, etc., for redress of workplace wrongs, regardless of their residency status, and (this is important) specifically granting illegal aliens immunity from deportation for so long as they are involved in any such court, agency, etc., proceeding against an employer.

The law would be simple and straightforward; the effect, mind-boggling. As soon as an illegal is located by the INS, all he has to do to keep from being deported, for several years at least, is report any labor-law breach committed by his employer, or find a lawyer who will sue his employer over same on a contingency basis. Not only must he be allowed to stay, he instantly acquires all the protections enjoyed by legal aliens.

What, you think illegal aliens will make up stories of exploitation to avoid being deported? Why should they make something up when they can just tell the truth? If the employer wasn't illegally exploiting his employees, he would hire citizens or legal aliens instead, and save himself the worry that rumors of an INS raid could suddenly deplete his workforce. There will be a real abuse to relate.

This solution incorporates the only good part of Bush's amnesty/guest worker proposal: the idea that illegal aliens who are smart and hardworking might just be worth keeping for awhile. Only the industrious, the aware, and the savvy will pursue the tactic of reporting or suing their employer. The rest will be deported when they are discovered. The really smart and industrious ones will report their employers as soon as the law goes into effect, instantly improving their wages and/or living conditions. What's the employer going to do, fire them and hand their attorney even more ammunition?

Oh, you say that what will actually happen instead is that employers will terminate illegal aliens in droves, and hire Americans and legal aliens instead? And the illegal aliens, unable to find jobs, will return home and become the corrupt Mexican government's worst nightmare?

Gosh, you're right. That would be terrible. Appalling.

Forget I said anything.

If you are reading this, immediately go to Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200 (well, actually, yeah, if you find $200 on the way, collect it). Watch and listen. Thank me later (half of that $200 you found would do nicely). For good measure, proceed then to Thank You Stephen Colbert and give Stephen a big shout-out.

The folks who brought you the thrilling "Cats In Sinks" (see entry of 2005.09.12) are at it again. Enter the fray over at KittenWar!