"The states are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies." -Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Roe v. Wade, 22 January 1973

It would be impossible for us all to share one unifying opinion about abortion, but I hope that in the future everyone can agree that it is a woman's choice and a woman's choice only what she does with her body, and that neither an individual nor a governing body can make that decision for her. If you "would never", then that's great, and I support that. I really do. I don't know if I could go through an abortion, either, and thankfully - because of classroom education and my mother teaching me about how to make safe choices while I was growing up - I've never had to make a choice so difficult. But one woman's "I could never" is not license to say to another woman, "You can't ever, either". We need to support one another in the choices we make, without judgment, without vitriol, but with love and understanding.

I don't believe that a man has the right to force a woman into a decision one way or the other, because carrying a child to term and birthing it is a physical experience he is incapable of performing. This is not to say that men don't necessarily have a place in the abortion debate; I just feel that their opinions tend to be more speculative. Unless you face the very real possibility of pregnancy, I don't think you can know for sure.

I believe in comprehensive sex education. It is not a question of morality; it is about providing young adults with enough information to know how to deal with the world as social creatures, and that not only involves knowing how pregnancy occurs and how to prevent conception, but how to minimise the likelihood of disease. It is as crucial to adult functioning as is knowing how to make a budget, shop at the grocery store, pay bills on time, and how to be tactful and polite to the people around you. If it is not taught at home, and sometimes it isn't, I think there is definitely a space for it in school curriculum (and I believe learning how to manage money should be taught in high school, too). An abstinence-only program creates problems where there could be awareness and solutions. Encouraging a teenager to sign a vow of chastity and then turning them loose into a world full of highly-sexualised images (mostly of women, but reforming this world into one which does not demean and objectify women is another huge undertaking altogether) just doesn't work. Teaching them about preventing disease, contraception, and showing footage of childbirth grounds them in reality, or at least gives them a place to start navigating the choppy waters of human sexuality.

I also think that if people are going to be loud and proud about being pro-life, then they might consider being more supportive of single mothers. You cannot proclaim the sanctity of human life in one breath and then direct epithets to women who either choose to parent alone or are not given that choice, with the other. I find it interesting that the judgment and blame for single motherhood, in most cases, falls soley on the woman; what of the man? I know a very bright young teenager - a minor - who is now about five months pregnant to a boy who is most definitely not a minor. I would not call him a man, because he cannot and will not step up to his responsibility. He gets off relatively scot-free, despite impregnating not one but two girls (his other baby is due in February), with no-one calling him out, or whispering behind his back that he must be a whore. He does not have to live with rumour and slander and changing diapers and not getting a full night's sleep for upwards of two years. He was caught having sex with yet another girl just in the past month. He hasn't got it into his head that there are repercussions, nor does he know anything about respecting a woman, nor does he seem to know about using protection. The girl in question also had responsibility, but she never learnt about it in school, and was rebelling against her mother by going out with this boy in the first place (so one might wonder if she would have listened anyway). A more academic study of sex ed, as would be presented in school, stands a far better chance of "taking" than does the more informal "birds and bees" talk so many teens have with their parents. It also eliminates the personal feelings of embarrassment that a teenager, in the throes of serious hormonal upheaval and brain/body development, might have when even thinking about asking his or her parents for advice on the matter. I feel very much that unplanned motherhood and abortion rates would decline if religious fervour were seperated from study and teenagers were allowed to learn about human sexuality in schools.

It is so hard to gather my thoughts on this matter without being longwinded or drifting off my point. I just wanted to write about why I'm pro-choice and pro-education on this very imporant anniversary, one which I hope can be observed for a long time to come instead of being thrown out with the trash, as I believe our current administration would like it to be.

P.S.: Mr. Bush, you can't declare this day "Sanctity of Human Life Day" if your political track record regarding the death penalty, erroneous wars, and not giving one iota of care to marginalized citizens (veterans, working-class, lower-class, poverty-level, single mothers - the list goes on) is to be believed. Good day, sir.

I flove the Carlton Dance. And quite possibly, I flove you, too.

"i just want to crawl into a hole and not deals. right, toki?"

Happy birthday, dearest Erica. I hope it is a wonderful, lovely day filled with glitter and sparkles :)

So now the Shuffle is even teenier, has a clip on it, holds 1 gig, and is $79? Effin' figures!

Even when I go for the lowest rent iPod available I still get screwed by the forward march of technological genius. Sigh.

BEST. CARTOON. EVER. MADE.

Equal rights for zombies!

Happy birthday to the incredibly awesome thelovehater. I hope your day is filled with fashion and fabulosity and that you have a wonderful cake - you deserve it! ♥

Found via bias_cut: ( myheritage.com celebrity-lookalike collage under cut )

Things like that are so fun. I'm glad the myheritage.com site has the cute collage option now!

Can I have a holiday, please?

Actually, we do have a trip on the agenda, as long as we buy tickets in time - we're going to do Gigantour again. They have an Oklahoma City date and this one will be an actual outdoor gig instead of cramming it all into Gwinnett Arena as was the Atlanta date last year. I'm quite looking forward to Arch Enemy, mostly because you don't really find much estrogen in or around death metal.

But, as awesome as Gigantour will be, it's not exactly a peaceful relaxing getaway of any sort. (I'm definitely bringing earplugs this year. In fact, I might bring a mass quantity of them and hand them out to fellow wussy-concert-goers.) I don't know what I want to do or where I'd like to go. I'd just like to not think about the world or work or the creeping futility of depression that simmers away gently in the back of my mind. If money were absolutely no object I'd like to catch the next few August dates for Jamiroquai. That'd be nice, but I'm not flying to Europe* without at least a frigging book to pass the time!

I haven't drawn in two days. I feel kind of hollow.

Well, back to being a pointless automaton. I have to be at work in less than seven hours. Yippee!

*hypothetically, as I don't have the money to even fly domestically

Because hand-washing is like, my least-favourite chore (and I just spent a good hour cleaning toilets, even including the use of a used - and never to be used again - toothbrush), the bra ball looks fantastic.

Enough procrastinating, I have more mould to conquer. Au revoir! ♥

now I ded from cute. FERRETS! IN A HEART SHAPE! I'm going to keel over from the adorability.

[click to see larger version, as always]


In other news, we saw "An Inconvenient Truth" tonight. I wish it could stay in theatres longer. I wish more people cared. I wish I could help spur more people into trying to make a difference. The whole thing makes me hopeful and heartsick at the same time. Sigh.

...or running out of Jose Cuervo, but I stopped crying about that hours ago.

Anyway, I discovered that although Boodie (cat #1) is mostly a sloth and will lay very still for very long periods of time, if I sing the chorus of "Loving You" by Minnie Riperton, she will get up and start circling around and bump her head into me and lick my hand. I'm not sure if she's trying to comfort me because she thinks the falsetto is actually a cry of pain, or if she just really, really likes Minnie Riperton and is trying to get me to buy a greatest hits album.

I have to be up in five hours or so to go to work. The NO SLEEP EXPRESS TRAIN is about to board. I will say that it generally helps the work day go a little faster if I'm in a state of sleepless wonkiness, though I apologise more because I'm more likely to accidentally throw things at people... packs of cigarettes, credit cards, handfuls of change. *bonk* "Oops, sorry about that..."

I think I'm going to draw s'more and try to take a nap on the comfiest of sleeping spaces, the livingroom floor.

♥

Poll #770719 Two shiny things enter... one shiny thing leaves.
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Glitter or Sparkle? (just go with your instinct)

1. Last night we were watching one of those "To Catch a Predator" shows on MSNBC. I can't help it, we get stuck on them whenever they're on (wasted an hour or two on a couple while we were in Denver in February, too). Obviously it's not awesome when creepy guys specifically set out to have sex with underage girls, but, one of the chat decoys from Perverted Justice used the username "snakesonagirl" in one of the trapper-chat things. Heh. Cracked me up big time.

2. On that note, we saw a trailer for "Snakes on a Plane" today. It started off with a bunch of text about how all the movies this summer will have superheroes and action and pirates and blah blah blah, but none but one will have... SNAKES ON A PLANE! Faaaaaaaaantastic.

That's about it. I'm thinking of posting some more drawings as I managed to put my scanner to good use yesterday and got a bunch of stuff out of my sketchbook and onto the computer. If you're sick of art and don't like mermaids I promise I won't be offended if you turn away during the next few posts.

i dream of bacon Drawn while waiting for a BLT sandwich at Jimmy John's. I should note they don't heat the bacon there (or at least not at that particular JJ's). It was kind of disappointing, but still baconlicious.

minkey boodle & boodie cuddling One time we came home from somewhere and the babies were on the couch. Usually Boodie growls and fusses when Minkey comes anywhere near her, but she's started to come around on the cleaning issue (usually she has to employ a rag on a stick; now Minkey Boodle sort of sticks to her like a suckerfish and helps her get all those hard to reach places, like the back of her neck). They can be found like this quite often these days, well, until Boodie starts growling and then runs away to be alone.

Bold all of the following TV shows which you’ve ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

( all the shows I'll cop to watching, under the cut! )

Aside: Shana, you've never seen any/at least three episodes of "Northern Exposure"?! How? It was so awesome..!

Happiest of all happies to dearest Sarah, aka cranberrysoda. A dear friend, a wonderful confidant, and my co-conspirator in all things arty and procrastinatey. Love you bunches and I hope you have a fantastic day with a wonderful cake to top it all off :) ♥

...grumpy, tired, lazy, annoying, annoyed, clueless, ditzy, discaculate, uninspired, disgruntled, moody, torked off, and to finish the list, hygenically clean but feel physically dirty (probably because a stranger touched my hair).

i've been trying to write this essay/soapbox rant/whatever but it's not gelling. i wish i could remember how to write coherently. the crux of the essay is about my hair colour and its transformation into this weird... thing. previously friendly people have become distant, people i wouldn't expect to talk to me have been talking to me, i've actually become a lot better - in just a month - at gracefully accepting a compliment. it's this whole mess of stuff that i want to get down, but i haven't given myself much practice in actually writing essay-style in the last few years, so it's frustrating. anyway. i'm dumb.

today i sold a lady two cans of red bull and a can of mountain dew. she held the soft drink and gave a can of red bull each to her two kids who looked like they were under six years old. i'm not even sure how to assess this.

i think i'm going to have a shower and try to undo the damage of being touched by skeevy strangers.

♥

How do my interests seem to come together like this? I'm a bit of a Mary Engelbreit enthusiast; and I've been thinking of buying a crockpot/slow cooker. Hence, this item has my name all freaking over it. How does that happen? Also, where do I find a spare $60.00 for an item I'm pretty sure I don't actually need right now, but want to grab up as soon as possible so I can a) hug it, b) squeeze it, c) love it, d) call it George, and e) make a delicious beef stew?

I'm lightly toasted. Still trying to work out the proportion of ice to mix & tequila - dang that tricky new blender that actually crushes ice to a pulp! - but I'll get it eventually. Meanwhile, cranberry juice does add a lovely new dimension to an old favourite.

Bleaching out the roots
Originally uploaded by sammygirl.

Bleaching by myself was a somewhat anxiety-inducing experience. The moment my hair started getting all crackly I wondered if I was going to have to just chop it all off. But it worked, and then I used toner (unlike last time) to take out the yellow/brassy colour leftover. I almost left it like this until Nathan pointed out the root growth would look really obvious, heh.

Manic Panic Cotton Candy Pink & SPX Virgin Rose
Originally uploaded by sammygirl.

And then I used the lighter pink on top and Virgin Rose on the back. It looks a lot more vibrant in person!

I also cut my hair tonight. I just chopped off some length from my ponytail and snipped some of the front to make it even. I suppose I could go get a 'real' haircut, but I'd rather spend my money on books and at Sally Beauty Supply (where I now have a discount card thingy... ha).

First of all, I want these, because if bacon makes everything better, surely wrapping its likeness around my cut or injured finger would boost healing by at least 50%.

Second, I want to make my fridge look like oranges! (Thanks to sarahparah for that find.)

Third, I'm working on a micro-"comic" format entry on my thoughts on meals I have loved, inspired by Sarahparah, as it happens. She asked what my favourite meal was and I really had to think about it because for a very long time my relationship with food has been completely warped. I've come up with a few things, though, and I'll post it as soon as it's done.

Fourth, we watched "Hostel" last night. We had to take anxiety breaks (okay, they were for me). I watched some parts through the ruffle on my pillow, and I was completely swaddled in blankets. rockgeisha, your future husband is a sicko! But, he's also very cute and very funny (we just started watching the accompanying documentaries). So I'll give him a pass for the sickness.

Fifth, I dreamed last night that I was having a tea party with Sara (inherbarefeet) and Leesa (ex- lovelylight). It was really sweet dream, and I reckon it would be really fun to do that some day. *shakes fist at vast amounts of distance*

Sixth, ♥

(Seventh, my cable company was being a douchebag last night so I don't know if this posted twice, but I had to update it after I woke up anyway.)

Fun things from the past week:

- on one of my breaks at work the manager from the pizza joint came over while I was eating dinner and reading "Entertainment Weekly" and asked if I was reading "that women's lib magazine again ", and I wondered for a brief moment whether I'd been transported back to the '70s, because isn't that the last time someone used the phrase "women's lib" sincerely?

- my in-laws loved my hair (or at least pretended really convincingly that it wasn't hideous), which gave me a huge boost of confidence re: walking around in public with a pink head, and I'm already planning my next colour, though I want to boost the hot pinkness some more before I go trying Virgin Rose.

- also, my roots have started to show in a huge way. Apparently I have very fast-growing hair.

- I found "Children's March: Over the Hills and Far Away" by Percy Aldridge Grainger on iTunes. I'm really stoked, because I seriously, seriously love that piece. Youth band might have twisted me a little bit. I also bought "Shepherd's Hey".

- in other iTunes news, I got "Faster Kill Pussycat" by Oakenfold feat. Brittany Murphy. It's pretty great, though the remix I wanted to get is "EP only", which quite frankly sucks and undermines the whole bloody point of iTunes, which is people shouldn't have to buy a whole album if they only enjoy one or two songs, but whatever.

- "X-Men: The Last Stand" was totally awesome, though I went in without having read any reviews or spoilers so that could be why I liked it so much. I especially enjoyed Kelsey Grammer, the man is freaking awesome. I love listening to him talk.

- I'm trying to decide whether to go out and forage for dinner or buy a bottle of Scotch. Scotchy scotchy scotch. Probably dinner, though.

   

	Before
( after )

Yeah, I can't quite believe I finally did it, either. Nathan actually said he wasn't sure I'd go through with it!
I look slightly ridiculous but overall I'm pleased. ♥

Dear Stomach Bugs/Food Poisoning/Generic Gastric Distress,

Whichever one of you is responsible for the sickness of the past week, please go away. I'm sick of feeling like crap and vomiting when there is nothing left to vomit is truly one of life's most unbearable experiences.

Seriously considering buying stock in Gatorade,
sammy

Dear Arby's Roast Beef Sandwiches,

You can stay, but the aforementioned stomach bugs/whatever mightn't really care for your presence, no matter how tasty, so tread lightly in there.

Yum,
sammy

Dear Work Management,

When we order every single flavour of Gatorade, and plenty of other beverages and cold items, please don't go ahead and double the order. I've worked tirelessly to make sure there's room in the cooler for us to move around and share space with the adjoining pizza place, and also keep our things organised, but this is just bullshit. I have no place to put my products and then the other vendors come in and further contribute to the mess because, hey! If it looks like a fridge exploded in there, why should they pay attention to my organisation efforts?

Have you guys even worked here before?
sammy

Dear Various Vendors,

If there is already a case of something, say fruit juice or soft drink or whatever, open on the shelf in what looks like a nice, organised fashion, all ready to be put on the shelf when there's an opening? Don't bring in and open a brand new case. It throws me off, screws up our organisation, and puts product out of date. Also, don't precariously stack full boxes/crates of stuff on top of half-full boxes/crates. It's dangerous and bloody annoying.

This is my cooler, you just deliver to it,
sammy

File under boring, but that's pretty much my week. Although we did get "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" on DVD for ten bucks at Target, and my boss is awesome and let me go home early today so I could take a nap, so there's that.

♥

I had this massively elaborate nightmare that was more like a horror movie than a subconscious barrage of symbolism and guys insisting that they wear the cheese, the cheese doesn't wear them. I'm thinking of trying to get it down in story form but I'm also kind of lazy and I'd rather go out and eat a roast beef sandwich. The gist is that myself and a bunch of my high school friends - all of driving age at this point, but apparently still living with our parents - went to what was supposed to be an old abandoned liquor store at night, for shits and giggles. Turned out some people lived there, and they were having a party, so they invited us in. They fixed us alcoholic drinks made in Gatorade bottles, and while we were all sitting out at a table drinking, one of the girls poured some out in her hand and noticed a powder settled at the bottom - some sort of drug. I immediately started feeling really weird, and while I still had my wits about me suggested we should try leaving. We got the three guys who hadn't partaken in drinks to take care of the car keys and all tried to get into groups to leave, but all of our cars had been disabled in some way. One was on fire, the other had people in it, and mine had these spiky things embedded in the tires. We were corralled back into the house and basically kept hostage, where the people there used us as psychological playthings... but there was also an element of mysticism and some paranormal things going on, too. It was quite strange.

Now I think I'll go about seeking that roast beef sandwich.

Albino squirrel!!!11!!