Contemporary slave labor

Soy and other agricultural products from Argentina

palm oil for unilever and snack foods

MIA

So, I started a new job at the beginning of June. Feeling overwhelmed. Like, come home, take off my shoes, pass out til after 9 overwhelmed. Mentally drained. Stressed.

But - I like being busy, and mentally challenged and stimulated at work. I don't like being too tired to meet my friends or talk to them on the phone. I do like having health insurance and OMG some money to pay some of my loans. I don't like having enough time to bother calling my insurance company and setting up my PCP.

Oh, and my dog has a lump on her leg. The cytology was inconclusive. Getting it redone on the 30th, but in the meantime, I'm very nervous about my baby. :(

Sort of my wet dream...

of "art" performances:
Saturday, June 20th: Detroit Symphony Orchestra & Project Bandaloop
Ellington Lawn
Mack Avenue just east of Woodward
10:30pm - Symphony | Aerial Dance
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra appears in a late-night outdoor concert performing the Overture to “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The repertoire will include works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Hindemith, and Stravinsky. San Francisco’s gravity-defying aerial dance troupe, Project Bandaloop, add their beautiful, vertical choreography to this special performance.

Now the question is, CAN I BRING MY DOG?!

shit's over. finally.

The miseducation of lauryn hill and the momentum the change in my life has built up are the only things that are going to get me through this right now. My life is significantly less melodramatic, though, and I'd like to get some perspective back. I'm trying.

Misc.

Good news! I got a job offer with decent wages and benefits that may allow me to both pay back my student loans and see a damn doctor and dentist. So excited at the prospect of not ending up in debtor's prison, I can't even tell you.

Bad news, breaking up with the on again off again guy from ohio. Permanently.

My thoughts on fat sexuality:

hiatus

just as a fyi to the few of you who don't speak to me by phone regularly, I'm having some personal issues resulting in depression, and withdrawal. I probably won't be commenting or posting much. I can get mean to spread the misery around, and I don't want that. If I can't say anything nice or resist making it all about me and my bullshit, then I'd rather just not say anything at all.

yay!!!!!

I got an interview at one of the hospitals that I used to work at on tuesday!!!!! OMG. And, I got an email from one of my replacements (it takes two to three people to adequately replace me at a hospital, apparently) at my old department in the same hospital saying that she's transferring and has talked with the boss about getting me back in there. Yay. Yay. Yay. No more temping! Benefits, vacation time, and a living wage! Soooooooo excited.

Forwarding emails: an exercise in stupidity

Sometimes I hate my job. Just now, I received a forwarded email from the most liberal coworker of the liberal office in A2. Srsly. It's almost cliche. All the floor space in the break room is taken up by different recycling containers, for example.

Anyone wanna guess what the email was about? Oh, noez, the dreaded deadly Swine Flu From "Mexland, and coming here all the time courtesy of our nonexistent Border Security " [sic]. I need to get out of here. For my own sanity.

The New Haven fire dept case

The partner/asshole asked me yesterday what I thought about the case. What I think is that the test is pretty much the same as literacy tests administered to keep the "wrong sorts" of people from voting. Seriously, my AP Gov class was barely edged out into second place in the state at a Constitutional competition, and this test is unfunnily hard. I don't even remember how long money can be allocated to the armed forces for.

Literacy tests, and the promotional test utilized and then thrown out by the city of New Haven apply a veneer of earned privilege over racism. I don't understand how the argument can be made that the test should stand, on a logical level. When a test question in undergrad was missed by a majority (usually between 50 to 75%) of the class, my professors consistently threw that question out because it was their failing as a teacher. Clearly, either the question was poorly worded, or they didn't teach the point well enough. If no one got promoted as a result of the test being thrown out, then what is the problem here?

It seems to me that Mr. White Firefighter and Ms. I was only admitted to UM Dearborn or Flint, not the A2 campus should get together and make lots of little stormfront babies. Nothing would make Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh happier.

A lesson from bloglandia

"Tells it like it is" and "being honest", in the context of talking about a beloved source of entertainment is code for "possibly may be bigoted and un-feminist, but I'm not going to call it an unfeminist guilty pleasure. Stop being so damned PC! I'll believe the dominant cultural narrative if I want!"

Not revolutionary or earth-shattering, I know. Just wanted to put it down to remember later.

On a separate note, the recent rash of idiocy about the parthenogenic ants makes me kind of want to redirect this into a mostly science-from-a-feminist-perspective blog.