Happy Monday Morning!

[trouble]

Happy Monday Morning. My day today is filled with Things To Get Accomplished, but my Sunday eve has been filled with sleeping! This is very exciting.

Awesome Road Trip Plan!!! Let's all get together at the end of May and go to historic downtown Fredericton! We could check out the archives, and do whatever else it is to do in Fredericton, and then go to the Labour History Workshop! It'll be so much fun! There's simultaneous translation from both French & English! They will feed us! It'll be awesome! C'mon, the Fandom Con Goers can't have all the fun with their FogCon and their WisCon and their WhateverCon! Historians of the world Unite! We could call it LabourHistoryCon!

...

No?

:(


Filed under "Yes, there's a modern-day eugenics movement" (because I'm still irritated about that whole conversation, so expect this to become a Thing):

Shannon Barber at Junk: Cracked

“Mizz Barr-Berr, take these and come back when you are ready.”

I was ready, I was twenty-one goddamn years old, people had been looking at my cervix since I was thirteen, and I had mammograms before. I had gone all alone to get HIV tests and full STD panels. I was so ready to-

Then I realized that supposedly I was a crack addict, prostitute and deadbeat Mom who had aborted countless hordes of fetuses. The pamphlets were for Narcotics Anonymous and there was one on sterilization. I left and sat at a bus stop trying to process what had just gone on.

A Bee Of A Certain Age: If Only Those Poor People Would Stop Breeding (via @challywrites on that twitter thing I miss hanging out on)

And I am revolted by the wealthly, well-educated, well-resourced people who wrote the Welfare Working Group’s final report suggesting that all would be well in this country if only the poor people stopped breeding.

It turns out that the key to decreasing the size of the world’s population is not forcing people to use contraceptives, or to have just one child, but to educate and empower women. Ensure that women are educated, ensure that they have the resources and capability to build lives for themselves, and can sustain themselves and their children, and in time, the population will drop. The process is so well known that we have a name for it: "demographic transition."

Filed under "Disability 101: Service Animal Etiquette"

Andrea at Manor of Mixed Blessings: Service Dog Etiquette for Dog Lovers

Unfortunately there’s no way for me to let people down gently because the only safe answer is “No, there is never an appropriate time to ask to pet a working dog.” There’s a lot of reasons for this, and I’ll detail them below from my own experience using Beowulf (in dog-accessible places since his Public Access Skills aren’t up to snuff for things like restaurants and grocery stores and other REALLY HIGH-DISTRACTION areas) and Sid’s training outing.

I got the best spam contact on LJ today from someone on Facebook offering me the opportunity to try and sell Canadians on expat insurance or something, I don't even know. I'm so happy that Livejournal has made it possible for such people to contact me! /sarcasm

Comments

[furikku]

I was under the impression that the only time it is ever OK to consider petting a service dog would be if it were off-duty for some reason and you were a good friend of the dog's user. o_O I am constantly dismayed at how ignorant (or, less charitably, entitled) other able-bodied people are about this stuff. This is a lesson people should be getting in like elementary school!

[slave2tehtink]

Elementary school kids, in my experience, are the ones who read the "Working Dog Do Not Pet" patches on Sid's harness, and then they DON'T HARASS ME ABOUT THE DOG. It's adults who are the incredibly ginormous problem.

[furikku]

WTF is wrong with people

Like I recall several times looking longingly at someone's service dog, but it would never have entered my mind to bother them about it, because NO.

Possibly service dogs should be equipped with service cluebats.

[slave2tehtink]

I am seriously considering teaching my SDIT to hand things to the person I indicate, so I can have him give them a little card that says "Congratulations! You noticed I'm a dog! I'm a Service Dog and when you try to distract me by petting me, talking to me, or trying to feed me, you are seriously endangering my person's safety, so please stop! Thanks!"

[furikku]

CUTEST CLUEBEATDOWN EVER.

Also assuming that is you in the default you look amazingly like one of my friends! :O

[slave2tehtink]

That is me! With my mostly blind Doberman, Tink. The black German Shedder icon I used earlier is my SDIT. It did occur to me at one point that probably I should have gone with a less striking-looking dog than Siddy...

[furikku]

You should still be allowed nice doggies without fear of harassment!

[kaz]

Sleeping is good. *nods firmly*

And. You are not the only one still irked about that, believe me. Just saying, I am TOTALLY not objecting to seeing more of That Thing. Even if the links in question are seriously DDD:-making. ;_;

[tiferet]

Um. I'm not denying that stuff like this happens, but I looked through the website and "Cracked" appears to be a work of fiction, unless I missed something.

[trouble]

I was linked it as a non-fiction thing, but I am often wrong. I assumed non-fiction because the name of the author was the same name as the character.

[tiferet]

Yeah, and I can totally see that but the name of the website is "Junk: A literary fix," and some of the stories are definitely fiction. It may also be a fictionalised account of something that actually happened; nobody really knows but Shannon Barber, but I thought the presentation was at the very least somewhat ambiguous and I had to wonder if all the bits about eating a lot of shrooms (they seem awfully expensive for that) and all the masturbation were fictionalised, at the very least. It reminded me of stuff by Kathy Acker who also combined sensationalistic tropes with lived experiences in her fiction.

[fridgepunk]

Are shrooms particularly expensive in your neck of the woods? /bemused as to why that particular pixel stands out as especially shopped

[tiferet]

I wouldn't know enough about the going rates elsewhere to know and it's been a long time since I looked.

IDK, though, I am a weirdo, one of the reasons I tend to not do drugs is that they cost money I'd rather spend elsewhere! :)

[fridgepunk]

That particular post has two seperate and different "creative nonfiction" tags on it, so make of that what you will.

[lauredhel]

It's also tagged "nonfiction".

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

I love your icon. One of my current projects is fleshing out the sea monster food web for Torn World. Sure enough, one of them is a kraken variant.

[silveradept]

Ah, thanks for these. Reminders and progress indicators are always welcome, even when they keep saying that we're not actually making progress.

[sami]

O.o

Pamphlets on sterilisation? Seriously?

I don't even know how to react to that. It doesn't fit into my world view. (I don't think we have that here. If it turns out we do, I have letters to write to everyone in Parliament.)