conuly

I'm not sure how I found this post, but you can go read it:

My life as a daughter of Christian Patriarchy

This woman has a blog in which she talks a lot about leaving her Quiverfull family and becoming an atheist and all that.

The post is okay, but then there's the comments. Or rather - The Comment, by Mr. "I'm gonna tell you what you should have posted".

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Does anybody have a derailing bingo? Because I think that last paragraph hits all of it. I'm laughing over here, but only because I don't want to cry.

I spent all day trying to find this video!

I would love to tell you what it's about, but you absolutely have to experience it firsthand. It's short!



( Don't read on until you watch the video! )

Curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everyone’s mind. It makes me get out of bed in the morning and wonder what surprises life will throw at me that day. Curiosity is such a powerful force. Without it, we wouldn’t be who we are today. […] Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder. Sure, there are many risks and dangers, but despite that, we still continue to wonder and dream and create and hope. We have discovered so much about the world, but still so little. We will never know everything there is to know, but with our burning curiosity, we have learned so much.

That's a pretty inspiring essay, right? Sure, it reads like something written by a sixth-grader - but hey, it was written by a sixth-grader, so that's all right.

That's why the new Mars rover has a new name, Curiosity. Read this link too. Annnnnnd this one.

Now, before you read the comments (and you know the rule about reading the comments!), go post your own comment about this. What do you think of the name "Curiosity", and the contest?

Great! Now, most of the comments are okay. They're polite, anyway. Some of them, though....

Apparently (read this, it's a good rant on the subject) she's been accused of picking a "cutesy" name (because she's a giiiiiiiirl, and has coooooooties), and of only being chosen because she's a girl and Asian and OMG SO PC!!!!!!111. (Picking the best essay is PC now?) We're "lucky" she didn't pick "My Little Pony" or "Hannah Montana" - because those names would definitely have won the contest, uh-huh. (Actually, that'd be pretty funny if they did, but that's beside the point.)

As I said, Curiosity may not be as good a name as Very Large Array or Yogi Rock, but it's certainly satisfactory for anything roving the surface of another planet.

She also brought home the monthly newsletter, which illustrated a few things:

1. Ana is incredibly photogenic.

2. Ana did indeed receive the Dolphin Award (for just generally being a great person and consistently being compassionate and helpful) at assembly last week and not just the attendance award. If they'd bothered to tell us this beforehand, I would have been there. Gah.

3. There is indeed a pajama party at school next week (in two weeks?) as Ana said. We didn't believe her because, again, this is the first official communication about it. Gah again.

4. The person who edits that newsletter is totally incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence. There is never, ever, ever going to be a need to put together seven exclamation points at the end of a sentence! And, for that matter, putting an exclam at the end of every single sentence just makes your work sound weak and childish. Save it for unusual emphasis. And on *that* note, quotation marks do not add emphasis - or, at least, not the kind she thinks. I want to know, if she is "thanking" us for this and that, what she's really doing? Mocking us behind our backs, perhaps? (Yeah, pot, kettle, but my post only reflects badly on me. Her abysmal writing skills reflect badly on the entire school.) And at least twice this person switched topics randomly in the middle of a paragraph! That's not even the half of it....

I suggested to Jenn that next PTA meeting she offer up her, mine, or our mother's services as proofreaders. But in some tactful way, not like I just did.

Let me go on the record as saying that text messaging me your change of plans does *not* constitute asking permission to glean free babysitting from me. An agreement that I'd watch them while 'dul is *nearby* and they're *still asleep* is not the same as "Yeah, sure, pop off to a movie a few hours away at this hour of night, and I don't mind putting them to bed once they have nightmares". Not in this lifetime, and certainly not for free. (I believe that under the standard rates in this city I've racked up at least a good $30 - and that's just for all the babysitting that happened after 'dul skipped off.)

I am fucking PISSED OFF right now, in fact. (Although I'm kinda happy that Ana remembered to knock at my door this time instead of just barging in and SCARING THE CRAP OUT OF ME).

So, after a good 45 minutes of sitting outside their door telling them not to fidget and to go to sleep, I realized that I actually didn't care if they're yawning all day tomorrow, or if 'dul is up all night tonight putting them back to sleep, or if his great plans for tomorrow are foiled because of lack of rest for the lot of 'em.

It's all his fault anyway.

So we trooped into Jenn's room (I could at least be comfortable, right?) and I let them stay up and be all good and hyper (put the kibosh on the pillow fight, though, and I *did* refuse Ana's suggestion that I simply make my way back downstairs and leave them awake and unattended) for the next hour.

I wasn't really being indulgent. I was just being petty. But it was fun, and not in the small-minded way. I mean that watching them be all bright and bubbly is fun! It is! Especially when it is, for me, totally consequence-free. If it'd gone on another 20 minutes, I'd've started baking cookies, too, so I'd say 'dul arrived just in the nick of time... baking at my current level of awakeness mayn't be the best of all possible ideas.

Here.

Somebody elsewhere tried turning this into a commentary on mainstreaming, and why this proves that it's not appropriate or something (and when I was young there was no diagnosis Asperger, so this kid would never be "mainstreamed", would he. He'd just be in the regular classroom as a matter of course, and people would have to deal), ever - and I'm still upset. How is that relevant to the fact that the teacher acted wrongly?

"Oh, well we don't know the whole story."

Well, yeah. I've been following this story. I know we don't have the whole story, and I know people are so upset that it's quite likely we'll never have the whole story. But what we have of the story is that the teacher admitted to using the other students to - in the best possible light here - discipline another student.

Five year olds, too.

I'm not really sure what other part of the story is going to justify that.

LIVEJOURNAL IS NOT PEOPLED WITH DOCTORS.

Oh, I'm sure there are doctors here, but none of them can really prove it anyway.

If you or your loved one or your KID is acting funny, and you have the opportunity to post on LJ asking "Gee, should I take him to the doctor?" - stop and think. If the odds are that everybody is going to say yes, get off the computer and head out now.

Repeat the mantra with me now, everybody: WHEN IN DOUBT, CHECK IT OUT.

I'm not saying you should rush to the emergency room on a Friday night just because your precious stubbed her pinky toe - but when you suspect a serious injury or illness just get up and go already. Don't waste valuable time posting on LJ, because your uninsured ass is just going to end up in the hospital anyway, might as well be sooner than later, right?

GOD, people.

Listen, I know you feel the call of duty. I do.

But last I checked, I had not participated in the vote for general arbiter of all that is right, good, or useful in the world.

When we do hold such an election, be sure to wake me. I promise to vote in a careful and conscientious manner.

Until then - really, feel free to lay down your burdens. You do not need to take the job for your own. No, really. No, really. When the world decides it needs somebody to tell us which books are okay to read, and which ones are only okay if we're adults, and which pictures are safe to see and which ones are dangerous for children under the age of 35 - on that day, we're as sure to turn to you as you are sure to jump to the call. Until then, you can just go take a little nap of your own. How about under a mountain somewhere, safe until your country, nay, your very world needs you again?

I promise - we won't forget the thankless task you've made your own for so many years. But now, now it's time to rest from it.

Seriously - knock it off already. It's getting a little annoying.

This has been sponsored by the letters S, E, and X, and commenters like you!

And last season was all about a nuclear holocaust in, uh, my city, and this year is all about a worldwide plague (featuring scenes of, wow, my city), and during the show is a commercial about some disaster film featuring, imagine that, scenes of my own city.

I am so sick of people destroying New York.

Every disaster film ever seems to feature NYC getting destroyed. Even if it's the entire world getting destroyed, they show footage of New York. Tidal waves crashing into the WTC (back when there was one, of course - I could never watch promos for that one, even before 9/11), aliens shooting the Statue of Liberty, I don't know. And endless scenes, of course, of abandoned New York City streets.

Why don't they pick on some other city for a change? How about Des Moines? I hear Des Moines is nice this time of year. Or Vancouver! They do all their filming in Vancouver anyway, why not just admit it? Or let's do something really crazy and do a city like New Delhi! Lots of people live in New Delhi! Or if you need that New York State atmosphere, you could always go for Buffalo. Lots of good jokes about Buffalo, and if it's a nuclear winter, well, there's always snow in Buffalo. Don't have to edit it in or fabricate it, it's just there.

That health teacher I mentioned a while back, that was in 2001. And after the disaster (which is to say, for very nearly the entire term), he referred to the WTC site (when it came up, which was more often than reasonable, at least after the first couple of months) as "Ground Hero" Really stressed that h in it, and it used to really annoy me. I don't even like saying "Ground Zero" and simply refer to it as the World Trade Center. That's what I've always called it, and until something else is there I see no reason to stop. Everybody knows what I mean anyway. I have a point with this paragraph, and that point is... uh... well, I guess it's just that it's really annoying and everybody should go destroy something else for a change the end.

(It's more than annoying. Like I said, I never could watch films which showed my city getting destroyed. This is my city! Hurts my very heart. Destroy the rest of the country, destroy the world, have the entire universe prematurely implode, but please show footage from somewhere else, thanks. That's all I want.

Am I the only person who thinks that 3 am is an unreasonable hour for a baby/toddler (young toddler? Older baby? Whatever) to be awake and playing with people? Is it perfectly sensible to find quiet games to play with the kid at that hour instead of putting her back to sleep? And when asked for quiet games, is it wrong to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the kid needs to sleep more than she needs to have fun? (Not to mention it can't be good for the parents to be up at all hours when they presumably do not have odd sleeping habits by nature.)

Because, frankly, I think the advice (politely stated at first... the person in question doesn't like me, and I feel no need to keep up the pretense) "PUT THE KID BACK TO BED" is eminently better than whatever That Twit was fishing for.

Of course I can, it's my journal :)

Lemme just share one thing people do with their kids that pisses me off.

I see this with some of Ana's friends, and every time it scares me, too, which is why it upsets me at all. People who let their kids just wander off wherever.

I'm not talking about people who try to stop their kids from wandering/running off, but it still happens. Or about people who have one very young child, and they follow the kid rather than trying to keep him/her contained.

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I like these kids, too, and I like their mom... but man, it scares me. It's bad enough they both of them like to go wherever, some kids are just like that - but it occurs to me that it didn't take long to (mostly) cure Ana of this affliction, and it just seems like a safety issue to me (and that even if it took longer to cure these kids of it, the effort should still be put in). Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I certainly don't know everything going on with everybody, but... *shrugs*

If you ever see somebody doing something you are unfamiliar with, and you ask if they need help, and they say no - don't help them!

If you come up and yank my mei-tai straps around, no shit I'm gonna yell at you. Because I need to know where they are. (And she's seen me put this on before, so I don't know *why* she thought this time was different!)

More to the point, if what *I* am doing is adjusting my wrap so the baby's arms are in and she isn't flopping around as she sleeps, and what *you* are trying to do is take the baby off of me - dude. Not only is that completely unsafe, and really scary, but you woke the baby. Don't get offended that I don't want people touching the baby. I don't even know you! And, as I said - you WOKE the BABY. Why you thought I'd even want her down in the subway when she was asleep, again, I don't know - BUT YOU WOKE THE BABY!

If I need help, I'll ask for help. Until then, keep your hands to yourself, thanks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/opinion/l06warm.html

As usual, the fashionable view eventually becomes tyrannical and will no longer permit debate. It looks now as if the momentum of the global-warming evangelists is unstoppable.

You state in your Feb. 3 front-page article that the United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s emissions. Somewhere between consuming and emitting fossil fuels is that thing called United States economic growth, which continues to be a boon to the world — for 2006, a sparkling 3.4 percent.

Some say they don’t want their children to have to cope with the alleged nightmare of climate change, but I am far sadder that my children will have to cope with the reduced richness of opportunity that will exist at every socioeconomic level in an economy crippled by restricted access to the energy that powers it.

It will be a sad sight to watch the spectacular American private-sector engine and the optimistic innovativeness that has always been its hallmark diminished for want of fuel.

She'd better get used to it. For better or for worse, the fuel was going to end eventually. If we end up switching to better sources of fuel, if we end up being less wasteful of it - there's still only so much oil in the world.

How short-sighted can you be, anyway? That's what I want to know. An "alleged" nightmare? As near as I can tell, it's already cost more than enough money in the US and overseas dealing with (not fixing) problems caused by climate change. That's an economic crisis right there, if you can't bring yourself to mind about human lives.

But, oh, don't mind me. It's not as though I've got evidence on my side or anything.

Sure you did, I posted all about it!

I'm sure I knew this - it's reminding me that I knew it - but I forgot. They made it longer (god knows why) and are showing it at Sundance this year. It's sure to be the feel-good movie of the festival!

There's a petition about this. Or, at least, about disagreeing with everything the video stands for, or at the *very* least, disagreeing with the comments that "almost everybody" wants to kill their autistic kids. Y'know, deep down inside.

There's a whole website devoted to videos about people loving their autistic kids... why can't that be at Sundance?

(That said, if anybody can snag me a copy of the full length video, without in any way contributing money to the parent organization that created that dreck, I'd be grateful to you. I have a perverse desire to see it.)

First we get the disabled girl who was sterilized and given hormones so she'd stay small (so she'd be easier to care for, an admirable goal, no matter how dubious the decision - and this is pretty damn dubious), naturally without her consent....

And just when you're getting over the WTF-ness of that....

Doctors: let us kill disabled babies (actual title!)

I haven't even gotten past the title yet. Taken a gander at the "related articles" section, with such gems as "Haunted mother who backs mercy killing" and "It's your right to die if you want to". Mind, I tend to agree with the second, disabled or not (though adding in proper help first, because it is a shame to up and kill yourself without a better reason than most seem to have), but it hardly applies to babies. I mean, let's say that word again - b a b y.

It's like we never left the dark ages. At least they were more honest about it, just stuck their unwanted children outside.

It's not my fault if you feel guilty over your choices. You think you don't eat as healthily as me? That's your problem, not mine.

You think I'm judging you for not eating as heathily as I do? Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not, but, again - your reaction to this perceived judgment is not my problem and it's not my fault.

I take no responsibility for other people's feelings, certainly not when I judge those feelings to be, frankly, absurd.

If I make (say) a comment that I find carrying my nieces in a sling to be more comfortable than the alternatives, that's hardly a statement that *you* don't love your children. And if you want to construe it as such, go right on ahead, but don't expect me to fall on my knees and pleadingly sob for forgiveness.

And if you sit around and whine how I and others make you feel unwelcome for your choices, well, guess what? Those choices are your responsibility - they sure as hell aren't mine.

Here's another newsflash: I don't know you? Then I don't care. I don't care if you drink, and I don't care if your drinking is totally excusable because of your shitty life, and I don't care if you rot your liver drinking, and I don't care about the excuses you think will make me apologise for my short-sightedness in saying "I never drink alchohol". My choice not to drink has nothing to do with any of the choices you make in your own life - which is good, because I don't care enough about you to necessarily make the right choices for you.

(Here's the part where, if I cared, I'd go on and on about how I don't drink because I dislike the smell of alchohol, and how it's in no way a moral choice. But guess what? I don't feel I have to defend my choice to not drink. I don't have to defend *any* of my choices - they are what they are. And for me to say "I don't drink" is not, despite your claims to the contrary, an attack on anybody who has ever accidentally overindulged. No, really!)

If you make a choice, and you think it was the right choice, great! You don't need to defend yourself to me just because I've made different choices. And even if I've made different choices and am totally judging or mocking you for the choices you've made, you *still* shouldn't defend those choices to me, because I don't care. I'm not going to read your defense and suddenly become a caring individual. I probably won't think much of it, in fact. And if you're secure in your choices, then your opinion should be the only one that matters. Certainly, I can't imagine why you care about the opinion of some random stranger.

Oh, and if you made a choice, and think it's the wrong choice? Deal with your issues on your own time. I don't need to spend my life listening to you whine about how you know it was the right choice when, by your persistance on the subject, you make me suspect that you really think it wasn't. (Not that I'm likely to say that to you, because I'm not a damn mindreader, but sometimes, really, the lady doth protest too much.)

In short, my acceptance or non-acceptance of your life doesn't change whether your choices were right or wrong. Take some responsibility for your own damn feelings instead of trying to lay all the blame on others.

Thank you.

Same guy as wrote the last two editorials about that poor little girl... "Before you judge her mother, go watch the Autism Every Day video!!!"

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Some links regarding that video...

One about unresponsiveness

Okay, I can't find my other links, but I'm sure people will rush to the cause to help me.

You know what the first article I read about Katherine McCallon said? It said that the day she was murdered by her mother, she had been "very stimmy" and wouldn't take a nap.

Basically, all in a day's work for a three year old, diagnosed or not.

Think about that.

I had a revelation the other day while riding the train.

The reason Jesus doesn't want people to pray in the streets like hypocrites is because loud train preachers just drive people away from God.

It's like a plot of the Devil - "Go out and preach! And send people scurrying from that arrogant God-guy! Hee, hee, this is brilliant, the sillies will just think the message came from God, because it sounds like what he'd say!"

When confronted with a street preacher, I feel like my space has been invaded. I start to think nasty thoughts towards Christians and their perceptions of God. Given the huge range of Christianity there is, this is a bad sign.

And it's such an unpleasant experience that the odds of me stepping anywhere near a church, for reasons other than "getting home", are very slim indeed - who wants to voluntarily sit through hell on earth?

I may even, being in such a bad mood, go and do some minorly bad things - yell at Ana more, forget to say thank you, snap at people who speak to me in a non-prosteletyzing manner.

I don't think anybody's been converted via the efforts of street preachers. Even if some have, if my experience is at all typical, more people have been driven *away* from church than driven *to* it. It's not like going to church will shut the sillies up, after all.

And what's really bad about the whole experience is that street preachers seem to think that talking louder is how you win arguments. Talk loudly enough, and you can't hear the people who disagree with you!

Believe me, I know the feeling. When confronted with an angry, stupid, uncaring world, all I want to do is yellyellYELL until people are forced to listen, forced to understand what's so very obvious to me! And I've done my fair share of it. More than, even. And when people refuse to listen, I'm worse than many street preachers - I want to tell them how stupid, wrongheaded, hurtful they are. I want to hit them until they understand by force and by arms that I'm right, they're wrong, lalalala!

Of course, it doesn't work. They don't listen to me. They yell back. They convince themselves that yelling is going to work on me, even as it fails to work on them. They insult me back - instead of hearing how obviously right I am, they try to blind me to the truth of my own arguments. They leave, and don't hear at all.

Why should I expect it to work? It *never* works. I'm right, but I've hardly done any good with it.

I'm not a religious person. But I know a few people who are, and a few who have converted. It seems to me from what I've read that people are more likely to be converted when they see how absolutely wonderful and nice and driven religion makes their friends. They see people they know who really are committed to the idea of making the world a better place, and they see how their actions lead to that.

I'm told this is a good way to raise a child, too. Don't say "Hey, dummy, are you too stupid to understand that I don't want you to be mean? *thwapthwapthwap*" but instead show them by example how much better it is to be nice.

This is obvious, right?

Yes?

Okay. Then, in an open question to all of LiveJournal, I have only this to ask...

Why do you hate your own causes?

Why is it that when somebody says something you don't agree with, instead of ignoring it, or talking to them nicely about why you don't agree with it, or asking them why they believe that (and listening to them, because it's flattering to be listened to), or showing them how much better you are for believing as you do... why do you immediately tell them they're horrible, stupid, mean people for daring to be less educated, less conscientious.

Not only are you making yourself look bad, you're making everyone else look bad. Next time somebody's a little touchy, the insulted person (who's by now gone deeper into their pit of disagreement, and will hold their views more firmly for the challenge) will take it as a deep insult. And it just gets worse from there, until you end up with a simple "Gee, I don't do that" being taken as a grave "YOU IMPERFECT FOOL!" Why do you think so many people get offended at the thought that some children don't watch TV or eat fast food? All it takes is a few people being snotty about it, and all of a sudden *everyone* who's made this choice is considered to be doing it only to rub it in other people's faces. (They're reacting to their own feelings of guilt, of course, or else they wouldn't overreact as they do. But it really doesn't help that there *are* people who are snots out there, on every side of every issue.)

It's stupid, sure. But you can't go around insulting people for being stupid. They won't get any smarter if you do that. You have to lie, really. You have to act like you understand, even if you don't. Act like you don't want to insult people, even when you do. Act like you care about their feelings. Some of them will change their minds, if you go about it in the right way. (Heck, maybe you'll be the one to change your mind. Oh, sorry. I know it's a scary thought. Just forget I even said it, okay?) That's called helping people.

Or, I guess, you could opt to simply be right. Don't have to help people if all you want is to be right. And it's sure easier.

This really applies to any issue under the sun, though lately I've seen it more with parental types. Makes me annoyed. It's so counterproductive.

You know what? I don't believe that.

Oh, I believe that she's having more and more trouble trusting people, but I don't believe that people are less trustworthy now than they've ever been.

That statement sounds suspiciously akin to "children today are far worse behaved than in my youth" and "the end is near" and "there's nothing new under the sun", statements which have been made since the discovery of fire. I'd say that they seem to be said more often these days, but then I'd have to smack myself. It's just that I notice them more because I'm not a child.

When I was a child, I was more trusting than I am today. I was naive, and even when people didn't act in a trustworthy manner, I often didn't notice, or chalked it up to one-time events. Now I'm, of course, a born cynic - but I don't believe the world has changed. I think I've changed, is all.

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Of course, I have no way to sort out those few bad apples (and I don't think there's proportionately that much more of them now than at any other time in human history) from the good. The safe thing to do probably would be to not trust any of them.

But I just refuse to do that. I absolutely refuse to go around acting as though everybody I meet is probably scum (or, at least, people from certain restricted classes who, for reasons outside their control, Just Can't Be Trusted. Catch the hidden message in this rant, why don't you). It's not right, and it's not fair, and it really pisses me off when people act like that anyway. Caution is okay, in a fair measure. Paranoia generally isn't.

Furthermore, I refuse to justify other people's stupid beliefs. Whether or not anybody trusts me, or cares, I am going to resolve, from now, to conscientiously act in a reasonably trustworthy and upstanding manner. This will not, of course, change anybody's opinion, even if I managed to get a lot of people to do that.

But I absolutely cannot stand people making dire statements like this and expecting the world to conform. I hate it.

(Plus, it really really *really* irritates me when those same "can't trust anybody" people then go ahead and act in stupidly foolhardy ways. Do they think they can't trust anybody, or that the world is populated full of saints? I just can't tell sometimes!)

First off, this? Didn't deserve an arrest. Duh. Back in high school, as soon as it dropped to 20 degrees out (or rose, whatever), there'd be guys coming in to school in bright Hawaiian shorts (about as much coverage as those boxers). Why? Because they could. And probably because they took the bus. If it's okay in school, it's damn sure okay on the train.

Secondly, the next person to tell me they have a right to be upset at free users getting subdomains, or that they don't think anybody will ever guess their password (or want to) is going to get royally smacked upside the head. I am dead serious.

There's more, but I'll go on all night.

Yeah. I've just now realized the *other* reason the complaints against it irritated me.

"Oh, my autistic kid doesn't rock, nor spin, it's such a stereotype, etc, etc, etc"

*taps foot*

Here's the thing. Many autistic people do rock. And guess what? SO DO NTS. Cradles? Rocking chairs? Swings, rocking horses, see-saws, rock-a-bye expletive baby? Rocking is something NTs do all the time.

And they spin, too! They pick their kids up and twirl all around, holding them by the waist or the hands or a hand and a foot. And then kids and adults clamber to go on carosels, and merry-go-rounds. Sit-n-spins weren't invented just to cater to autistic kids, after all.

And yes, non-autistics spin objects, too - spinning tops and dreidel-dreidel-dreidel-I-made-you-out-of-clay and pinwheels and spirographs....

So this is a bad thing why exactly?

Autistic kids rock. So do all kids. It's what they do.

(And before you tell me that the difference is in degree, I *know*. That's not the point.)

I have another rant on playing coming right up.

This is one of my mother's favorite stories about me. I've told it before, so I'm going to cut it.

( Somebody carried a big stick, but he didn't walk softly )

I should explain that "it has a name, you know" was a catchphrase around the house my entire life. The word "thing" was Just Not Acceptable. (I sometimes wonder how my mom would've reacted to Latin, where the word "res" is bandied about like nobody's business, but that's a tangent.) So part of my reply has to do with the fact that I knew that everything has a name, and that that name is rarely, if ever, thing.

But the rest of it centers squarely on my belief, already firm as a child, that most of the world is stupid. Fortunately (or perhaps not), I'm not entirely certain of that belief anymore, but I find myself thinking that people are stupid all the time. And I always want to use those four words: "That's stupid. You're stupid." It's so often true, after all.

People are unbelievably stupid. They do stupid things. They say stupid things. And then they act like the stupid things they do aren't stupid, even though they can't explain why they do it.

They say things are fine when they clearly aren't fine, and get upset when you point that out, when all you want to do is know how to act better so that things will be fine again. The smart thing would be to tell people what's upsetting you, but instead they do the stupid thing and lie.

When confronted with the basic fact that many children are savage beasts, they conclude that they should teach the preychildren to be different, because... I don't know. Because there's less of them? But clearly the solution lies in making the other children gain some measure of decency, doesn't it? (I rather like children, tell the truth. There's something refreshingly honest about their general uncivilised ways.) The savagebeastchildren aren't going to stop attacking the others just because the others work themselves to death trying to change, they're too clever to be fooled that easily. And even if they are, they'll find somebody else to pick on. Every wolfpack has its scapegoat. Scapewolf? Point is, that's how people tend to be. Except we're not wolves, or lions, we're humans, and we can either admit we don't live up to our ideals, or stop doing that.

I'm tired. I've been getting to bed early. This post isn't very good. People are stupid, though. I'm sorry to say so, but it had to be done. Love you all dearly, you're clearly not people, because I don't think you're stupid. I'm going to bed now. This ending is also not very good, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't type until I wake up.

Serva me! Serva me! Undae magnae sunt!

(I love that line. Latin for Americans, people!)

I hate that argument. Loathe and abhor it. Do you know how many times I've heard some self-righteous little mind cry that society is in decline? Wish I knew. And when I read back through the pitiful collection of historical documents I, um, read through, guess what? That's the unifying thread. No matter when or where you are, somebody is there getting up on a soapbox and declaring that society is in decline, that children don't obey their parents, that life was better when they were young, and it's a crying shame that we should Do Something About.

The books are all wrong now, the winters are too short, and we don't get proper sunlight nowadays. Why, when I was a young whippersnapper, I hiked three miles, in the snow, just to get to school, and I was happy for it! Uphill, both ways!

People were saying that before there were schools, and it was a lie then just like it's a lie now.

Society can't possibly be in constant decline. We'd've noticed. Among other things, at this point we'd all be pointing, grunting, and having sex with our brothers and sisters. Instead, what we've got here is a classic case of overexcited hyperbole by somebody who doesn't like Harry Potter, and who thinks that's linked to the current decline of society.

I wonder if I should take my time to argue. All this has happened before, and will happen again, right? (Look at me, all Ms. Pop-Culture-referency!) So I could correct her, but another three would take her place (and you know what I blame that on the breakdown of? Society!). So it's a bit of a waste of time, really.

Still irritates me. A lot. Grr.

As for "what is literature", that's just a stupid question. I note that nowadays many people reference Uncle Tom's Cabin as literature. I've read that. It's a piece of well-written, fairly-honest, useful propaganda, but I wouldn't deign to call it literature. I do suppose it's better than anything about a boy called Tom Swift, though.... (But, gasp, at least they didn't have Famous Harry Potter to idolize then!)

And now he says, when I call him out on his sexist, ageist, and racist language (and I still think that was racist): You're not the boss of me! This is a free country! And other such playground classics from the man who wants us all to graduate "highschool". I've removed myself from the discussion, because he apparently doesn't realize that it doesn't matter whether I rule the world or not, that sort of thing is not acceptable. We've all refrained from commenting on his age, race, gender, sexuality, the whole of it, the worse any of us has done is called him "stupid". He gets to try to do the same now. Fair's fair, right?

I'm describing it that way because I'm about to go off on a tangent.

A while back, I made a passing comment about potential gay relationships in Harry Potter, and received the reply that it would never happen because JKR is writing a fun book, she's not trying to "make a point about homosexuality".

I didn't reply. I know this may come as a surprise, given my propensity for charging in wherever I think somebody is wrong, but... I couldn't find the words. What could I possibly say to this person?

I remember the Kel books, by Tamora Pierce. In one of them - the first one, I think - one of the characters (a good guy, as it happens), got back at the Sexist Pig Jerk character for an insult by turning it around and making it a gay innuendo. Which eventually prompted a short discussion on how homosexuality isn't accepted in Tortall, but it is elsewhere, something our main character, as far as I remember, doesn't find completely rational (the first part, not the second). Gay people are at least acknowledged to exist in Tammy's books, even if in them no person is explicitly identified as gay. This didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment of the books, nor did I feel I'd been preached at. Later, I read transcripts of several conversations with her in which different characters are identified as gay. (Pretty sure they were reliable transcripts, but I could be wrong here. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I doubted their veracity.) Does that make these books political?

Harry Potter already had one openly-disabled character, Moody. Nobody thinks that having a guy missing a leg and an eye is some sort of statement on disability, do they? They don't complain that by having him turn his missing eye into an advantage that she's somehow bowing to political correctness, not that I've seen.

Racism is a persistant theme in the Harry Potter books. Various groups of people are discriminated against because of what they are, instead of who they are. This would seem to go against the idea that JKR is just trying to write a fun book. But, interestingly, all conversation about race is limited to fictional groups of people - giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. There's at least two clearly defined black people in this English school. There's the Patil twins, obviously Indian. Does this mean that JKR is trying to make some sort of point about race and multiculturalism in England? Or is she just writing the magical world as a logical subset of the nonmagical world, with the human races represented in the same proportions as they are here? Certainly, if she is going for that level of realism, it would be fair to assume that the same percentage of wizards and witches are gay/bi as in the real world, right?

When we find out that Blaize is black, nobody in the books seems to go around shouting OMG! BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL! (The real world is a separate issue, and it will cease to be so as soon as I self-define "real world" to exclude those sillies.) So why should it be an issue to find out that a minor character (or, gasp, a major character, should she be so daring) isn't straight? All it has to be is one line about how so-and-so kissed so-and-so else, and they both are the same sex. They've had interracial couples, and nobody thought that was some sort of political point.

I mean, this is Harry Potter! Action, adventure, and derring-do! It's not like she's devoting chapters and chapters to... um... well, if she'd had more gay, maybe she would've avoided it so as to not upset the fundies. (Not like she should care, they hate her already for magic, but...)

It's my rant. Yay!

( On respect, and teaching )

On a side-ways tangent, let me just say that offering rewards for doing well in class is just a bad idea. One would think that research in that area was wide-spread enough that everybody would know it by now. But maybe psychology isn't a required course to become a teacher...?