Saturday Links (I no longer live in Seattle edition)

May 6, 2017bloggingfriday, friday links, links, moving, personalfontfolly

We had great parking karma at the new place. I took this pic from our kitchen window shortly after the guys started unloading.

I kept trying to block out some time earlier in the week to work on at least a short Friday Links post that I could queue up and, well it didn’t happen because moving and packing eats all of your time, energy, and brain power.

Wednesday night we came home from our last run of things to the new place to find No Parking signs in front of our building and the little house next door. We knew the people over there had sold their house recently. Turns out they had movers coming Thursday, too and they had paid for the permits to shut down parking to make a place for the truck to park. When our former landlady moved out in February, the moving company she hired (and she had raved about how good a job they did so much that we hired the same company) had simply parked their truck in the long driveway that runs along side our old building to the mini parking lot in back. So that’s what we’d planned to do. I had chatted with the property manager and he had assured me that the construction crew (who had come in Monday, just hours after our last neighbors had officially moved out, and in the first day yanked out all of the applicances, sinks, et cetera and removed an entire interior wall) would not park in the driveway so our truck could. So, guess how many vehicles pulled into the driveway the next morning? If you guessed a number less than three, you’re too low…

The next door truck crew shows up and is parked in front of the next door house and debating the pros and cons of having to carry everything between the two cherry trees when our crew shows up in a much bigger truck. There is a lot of chat between the crews, and then the next door two-man crew moves their truck into the empty driveway of the house they are emptying, and our crew parks in the spots that the next door house owners paid to have clear. We walked our guys through stuff and they got busy then a third moving truck from yet another moving company gingerly makes its way through our narrow crowded street and winds up parking around the corner where they start moving someone out of the duplex down at the corner. And then, wait for it! and then a fourth big truck comes through and winds up parking blocking three driveways across the street because they’re delivering new refrigerators, stoves, washers, and driers for the two downstairs units that the new owner started trying to remodel themselves in February before hiring one guy for much of April, and finally turning to professionals this week. So they’re trying to unload and move a bunch of appliances, and three different moving crews are working at three buildings side-by-side… and then a utility truck pulls up and it turns out the new owners also hired someone to come in that day and haul away some of the debris of the renovation.

Our guys handled our stuff quickly, we all drove away from the old place together sooner than I thought (the other two crews were still packing). We got to Shoreline and by a miracle a big chunk of the street parking right in front of our house was open. The guys unloaded and helped us set up the furniture. We settled up our bill (Michael first running around and handing each person a tip because, as he said, when he first moved to Washington back in the early nineties, he worked as a day laborer for moving companies for several months). We all waved cheerfully good-bye. Michael and I started carrying up the bed linens and other things we’d packed in our car before the truck arrived and we were partway through that when Michael noticed that they’d left the sling for carrying mattresses and the like. So I called the company, and they were able to get the crew back to us before they’d gotten on the highway. So we got so see them one more time.

Thursday night we both slept like logs. Michael went into work, his first time riding the new bus route instead of biking, and I spent the day unpacking. If I have counted right, I’ve unpacked 43 boxes of books, a couple of suitcases worth of clothes, and three boxes of kitchen things. Michael has set up the network, his computer, assembled a piece of furniture or two. There is still so much to do!

Anyway, here are the links I found interesting this week, sorted into categories.

Culture war news:

Last Saturday I posted a Weekend Update that included a news story that referenced some less-than-loving comments by a Wyoming state legislator to the effect that when queers are harassed or beaten that they bring it on themselves. There are some updates: Republican senator apologizes for saying ‘a guy who wears a tutu’ in public ‘kind of asks for it’.

He apologized, in part, because a Fox News contributor quoted his comments, and specifically added a reference to a notorious murder of a young gay man in Wyoming: FOX News Contributor Agrees: LGBT People Who Dress Outside the Norm are ‘Asking for’ Physical Violence.

…but he also apologized because of actions by his fellow Wyoming citizens such as this: Tutu Protests And Parties Break Out In Wyoming Over Senator’s Remark.

All of this underscores a deeper phenomenon that I had hoped to find time to write about, but someone at Slate has already done it, so: .

Why Some Conservatives Think LGBTQ People Deserve to Get Beaten Up.

This Week in the Resistance:

May Day protesters take to the streets for the rights of labor, women, immigrants.

Trump resistance sees record fundraising after AHCA vote.

This Week Regarding the Lying Liar:

Yale historian warns it’s ‘inevitable’ that Trump will stage his own ‘Reichstag fire’ to save his presidency.

News about the Fascist Regime:

TrumpCare: Mass Murder in Broad Daylight.

The ‘breathtaking hypocrisy’ and ‘horrors’ of Trumpcare, spelled out in a New York Times editorial.

Elizabeth Warren: “A bill that destroys health care for millions to shovel cash to the rich isn’t a health care bill.”

Rachel Maddow Details the Carnage Trumpcare Will Inflict on Tens of Millions of Americans.

This Week in Racists, White Nationalists, and other deplorable idiots

NY Times’ new columnist: Global warming can’t be serious if activists have kids.

Shaming Children So Parents Will Pay the School Lunch Bill.

Things I wrote:

Weekend Update 4/29/2017: Show me what a man hates and I’ll tell you what he is.

My shoe broke while I was carrying a box upstairs and other news from the moving zone.

My shoe broke while I was carrying a box upstairs and other news from the moving zone

May 2, 2017lifemoving, packrat, personalfontfolly

The sole started coming off at he heel literally as I was carrying a box of things up the stairs.

First, I am well aware that many aspects of our situation are much more fortunate than they could be, for which I’m grateful. I’m also aware that our misadventures trying to move will never be as compelling to peopl other than ourselves. But I’m stressed and tired and sore all the time and want this to be over. I’m not getting real writing done while moving has eaten my brain, and I feel a bit guilty that I’m not posting anything more interesting. On the other hand, laughing at some of the odd things that have happened is the only thing allowing me to kid myself that I’m holding onto my sanity. Maybe you’ll find some of it amusing.

Let’s start with shoes. Typically I have about four pairs of shoes at any given time: the shoes that I wear on workdays, slightly more interesting and casual shoes I wear other days, one pair of shoes suitable for formal occasions when I’d wear a suit and tie or the like (they happen irregularly and lately have most often been funerals, but when you need to dress up, you need to), and then there’s a pair of sort-of sandals that I can get my feet into even if I have really bad gout attacks in both feet at the same time, and otherwise are the pair I grab if I’m running out to take out the trash or some other temporary errand outside.

That last gives you an important clue about me. I don’t like wearing shoes. When I was a kid, my grandpa, who also ran around his house without shoes all the time, always said it was because he was an Okie at heart. “You can take the boy out of Oklahoma, but never take Oklahoma out of the boy.”

My workday shoes are never dressup shoes. They are usually some variant of hiking boot or pseudo-hiking boot, because for about two decades now my commute home has always included a few miles of walking–by choice. You’ll never get me to go to a gym regularly, but when given a choice between a crowded bus ride (or worse, waiting interminably for a bus because a traffic issue elsewhere in downtown has delayed all the buses) or a walk that will clear my head and doesn’t cost me anything, I’d rather take the walk.

My most recent pair of workday shoes were in need of replacement. It’s funny how shoes will be absolutely fine one day many months after buying them and walking several miles a day in them, and then one day you take a step and you can feel that the undersole support is collapsing. But buying new shoes takes time that I haven’t had lately, because every moment of my life has been filled with either tasks at work with looming dire deadlines, or trying to get through the enormous list of tasks that have to be done to get moved.

And then a bit over a week ago as I was packing, I found a pair of hiking boots in the closet that I hadn’t thrown out when I replaced them. I tried them on, and the undersole support felt intact. The entire shoe felt so much better than my current pair. So I started wearing them. A day or so later, my husband showed me a box of black leather tennis shoes, brand new in a box from the back of another closet. In my size. “I think you bought these as part of a two-for-one sale a while back,” he suggested.

So I told him about finding the other pair, which prompted him to ask whether I had thrown away the current pair that I knew needed replacing. “Well, no,” I admitted. “I just started wearing these because they’re in better shape, but I wore them for a long time a year or so ago, and they’re liable to break down soon.” To which he replied that if that happened I could switch to the brand new pair. And he threw away the current shoes.

Fast forward to the night I decided to squeeze in one more run of things over to the new place, and as I was running up the stairs with a box, it suddenly felt as if something had gotten hung up on my shoe was the flapping about.

Nope. The sole was simply coming off.

By chance, that brand new pair of shoes my husband had found had been carried over to the new place on a previous trip, and it didn’t take me many minutes to find them, so I could go back to running up and down the stairs.

I’m not sure which part of this I should be most embarassed about: that I was working in shoes that hurt my feet and choosing to put off fixing the problem until after the move; that I had hung onto an old pair of shoes I probably should have thrown out and had completely forgotten they were in the closet; that I had completely forgotten a pair of new shoes I bought some time back and let them get lost in the closet.

I recognize that packrat behavior is deeply ingrained in both of us. I have often commented that I’m a packrat, son of packrats, grandson of packrats, great-grandson of packrats (and probably more). I don’t intend that as some kind of excuse that the behavior is something I can’t help doing, but rather to remind myself that I have a ton of learned behaviors, attitudes, and assumptions that reinforce the bahavior. The fight is constant.

We have hauled a lot of stuff to Value Village. We’ve recycled so, so much paper that had been filed and boxed and not looked at in years. We’ve thrown away a lot of stuff. We’ve given away a lot of stuff. But there is still so much stuff!

Even though my goal for this move was not to move anything that we’d just unpack and get rid of, we both suspect that we’re going to decide, while unpacking, that a not insignificant fraction of what we’ve hung onto should have been pitched. We’ve also reached a point where we realize, due to time constraints, that a chunk of stuff that we haven’t had time to go through is going to have to be moved and sorted afterward.

I think the important thing will be not to let ourselves feel guilty about this. We had a plan. We had the goals. Some days we just don’t feel the same level of ruthlessness as others. And earlier in the process, when the number of boxes had not yet swelled into the triple digits, it was easier to be optimistic about how much we’d gotten rid of as opposed to how much we’ve kept.

Sometimes we fool ourselves, and those packrat habits of thinking have tricky ways to making us think we’re being practical in our decision making. And sometimes things fool us. Like the pair of boots and looked and felt as if they were in much better shape had had more wear left in them than the did.

At least I didn’t fall down the stairs when the shoe failed. Have to look at the bright side, right?

Weekend Update 4/29/2017: Show me what a man hates and I’ll tell you what he is

April 29, 2017newshate groups, haters, lgbt, news, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

“So many homophobes turn out to be secretly gay that I'm nervous I'm secretly a giant spider.”—Jeremy Kaplowitz — “So many homophobes turn out to be secretly gay that I’m nervous I’m secretly a giant spider.”—Jeremy Kaplowitz

We are deep in the shack nasties as we’re trying to get moved, but a couple of things popped up in the news since I posted this week’s Friday Links that I just have to comment. First up, Study confirms some men use anti-gay and sexist & homophobic jokes to shore up their masculinity. Many of us have observed this anecdotally, but it’s nice to have some new science on it. “The study, from researchers at Western Carolina University, assessed how heterosexual men responded to various forms of humor when they felt their masculinity was being questioned. The men who placed more value on how they conform to expectations of masculinity were more likely to embrace humor that denigrated women and gay men if they felt they had to prove that their masculinity was in check.” Note that the study specifically looked at how the men responded to jokes and then what sorts of comments they might make while discussing humor in general. So the context was reading, writing, and discussing humor. The study is therefore revealing a single manifestation of a deeper phenomenon—the more insecure a man is in is own masculinity, the more likely he is to denigrate women and queers. Note also that the study shows the other side of the effect: a guy who feels secure in his masculinity was less likely to bash women and queers.

Keep that in mind as you read these news stories:

Tennessee Passes ‘Natural and Ordinary Meaning’ Bill Which Will Strip Rights From Same-Sex Couples, Women

Rep. Randy Weber Tearfully Begs God To Forgive America For The Sins Of Legal Abortion And Marriage Equality

Fox Contributor: Gay Men In Bars Should Expect To Be Assaulted And Women Shouldn’t Breastfeed In Church

The Alabama Legislature Voted To Let Adoption Agencies Turn Away LGBT Parents

Kentucky Judge Refuses to Hear Any Case Involving a ‘Practicing Homosexual’ Wanting to Adopt a Child

Chechnya’s President Vows To Eliminate Gays By The Start Of Ramadan

Gee, what has all of these men so angry at gay men, lesbians, and women?

Also, remember that it isn’t just one study from this year. Here are a few more: Homophobic Men Most Aroused by Gay Male Porn for 2011, and Study Reveals Homophobic Men Are, In Fact, More Likely To Be Gay from 2014, and Scientific American: Scientific American: Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals – A new analysis of implicit bias and explicit sexual orientation statements may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes from 2012, and Homophobia correlated with Homosexual Arousal from 2010, and let’s not forget from 1996 Is Homophobia Associated with Sexual Arousal? (spoiler: yes), and… and…

Draw your own conclusions.

One last thing, the new study that I cited at the beginning? It also showed that test subjects who showed, on a pre-study survey, a higher degree of Precarious Manhood Beliefs, and then were exposed to information that affirmed that a man being able to see things from a women’s perspective and a woman being able to see things from a man’s perspective were both good things? They were less likely to verbally bash women or queers. Which seems to back up the notion that all this misogyny and homophobia within the culture is causing harm. Gee, who’d a thunk?

Friday Links (100 days of scandal and lies edition)

April 28, 2017bloggingfriday, friday links, links, newsfontfolly

It’s Friday!

We’re still packing and moving and packing and packing and… I finally had a responce to me ad giving away two four-drawer steel filing cabinets… and a few hours later the guy who responded said “never mind.” I really don’t want to have to pay someone to haul these away…

Anyway, here are the links I found interesting this week, sorted into categories.

Links of the Week

Tiny Jyn Erso Heads to Star Wars Celebration, Hands Every Leia a Copy of the Death Star Plans.

Stories Of Gay Men Tortured In Chechnya Read By Refugees In Heartbreaking Video.

This Week in Restoring Our Faith in Humanity

Someone Chained A Cross To Gay Street In NY. What Happened Next Was Beautiful.

Restoring Our Faith in the Rule of Law

Judge blocks President Trump’s order that cut off funds to ‘sanctuary cities’.

This week in the war on trans people

Undocumented Transgender Immigrants Can Either Hide Under Trump Or Face Death At Home.

This week in international hate crimes

Trump’s been silent; Putin’s shrugged it off. But you should care about Chechnya. Chechnya wants to ‘eliminate’ its gay population by the end of May. We can’t sit back and watch.

This week in bi erasure

Report: Fear of Being Outed Prompted Killing by Aaron Hernandez.

Aaron Hernandez proves we have no idea how to talk about bisexuality.

This week in abusive people

10 Things I wish I’d known About Gaslighting.

My abusive narcissistic ex-husband — Part 1: Falling in the hole.

This week in awful people

Scott Baio on ‘Happy Days’ Co-Star Erin Moran’s Death: ‘For Me, You Do Drugs or Drink, You’re Gonna Die’. (For the record, autopsy says she had stage four cancer and was likely the cause of death)

Erin Moran’s Brother Didn’t Hold Back While Shitting On Chachi And Chachi’s “Tiny” Dick .

News for queers and our allies:

Senator Patty Murray Is Trying to Ban Gay Conversion Therapy Nationwide.

Indiana transgender man named high school prom king.

This “13 Reasons Why” star explained why he decided to be open about his sexuality, and it’s so important.

Science!

Another rain record falls for Western Washington: Seattle just broke a 122-year-old record for rain. That makes this October-through-April the wettest such period since record-keeping began in 1895 — and there was still another week of April left to go when this was published!

Fossil find reveals skunk-sized predator roamed Egypt 34 million years ago.

Earliest Fungus-Like Fossils Date Back 2.4 Billion Years.

Mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers and other megafauna went extinct because of ancient climate change.

What happens when you get a crayfish drunk.

Heliosphere, Our Sun’s Sphere Of Influence, Is Not Shaped Like A Comet.

Cassini Photos: Probe Snaps A Spectacular Shot Of Earth In Between Saturn’s Rings.

Caterpillars Saving The Environment: Worm Parasite Could Stop Plastic Bag Pollution.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!

Fix the Slating Problem Forever.

John Scalzi Ventures into The Collapsing Empire.

The Problematic Presentation of Gender in Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning.

Will We Ever Know Why Disney Remade The Jungle Book? (Yes, it’s from a year ago, but still worth a read!)

This Week in History

From Germany to Mexico: How America’s source of immigrants has changed over a century.