“Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”—President Obama
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+Love = -Sleep
At this point I’m assuming that being in love means absolute lack of sleep…
I don’t mean the “OMG! I love him so much I can’t even sleep” it’s something more like “Let’s talk about this, let’s watch that, sexy times? wanna go to this party? Oh it’s 3 am, goodness where did the time go!” and by the time the weekend is finished I realize I actually have work tomorrow and I will not be able to focus because all my left over energy will be spent trying to stay awake.
I’m assuming at some point my logical self will start to intrude and say something like “Hey Steph! This dude is pretty rad and all, but you have to support yourself and I’m no sure how long this is going to work without you collapsing” but for now I’ve added Cuban coffee to my diet and hope that I can make it through the day…
Now I’ll toast to constantly running on empty.
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Funny little thought…
I’m 27, best age ever to be, because
- It’s a multiple of 9 = amazingness!
- I’m technically still in my 20s
- Old enough to call 18 yr olds “Kids”
- Still cool… or so I have decided.
But a funny little thing happens when one has ovaries and also nearing the 30s… Up until this point, I’ve always thought “I will have kids” END. However, something is happening now, I’m starting to think, what if I don’t? It wouldn’t be that bad, right? Besides if it all fails when I turn 45 I can just adopt a 10 yr old or so and boom! I have a kid… It probably won’t be exactly the same, but it does give me sometime to do activities that I want to do prior to motherhood… But then again I do want one of my own, and I want to be young-ish when I have them so that I can do activities with them… And then I have a career to worry about and I really love it so I probably won’t be the type of mother I’d like to be…
Status of this decision = switched from a yes to a maybe… Hopefully I’ll keep it there because, let’s face it I can be that 40 yr old that finds herself with a “surprise”
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No sleep = No writing
As with many creatives, I’ve come to the realization that I only write when depressed or angry. Which are essentially negative feelings. Happiness very seldom pushes me to write… There’s also a level of numbness that comes from writing very often and soon every idea that comes to mind seems to be an aftertaste of what has been written in the past.
And yet, here I am, not depressed or angry, but content. I suppose I am a little disappointed at my lack of commitment, but clearly not enough to write a full blog post about this…
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On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:
Stop sending me that video.
The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.
Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.
By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.
And as far as what they do with that money:
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.
Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.
The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”
Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.
Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.
Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.
The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.
There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.
[kony2012.]
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Dear Sibling,
No! Just No!!
You may not add the person I’m dating on facebook, it is not allowed, it is not okay, especially if I specifically requested for this not to happen.
I understand that you’re pulling for this thing that is happening between him and I to go long term. I also understand that you want him to feel accepted as you think we’ve accepted your significant other…
You just need to get this straight, I already said no! Adding someone on facebook after I’ve already asked you not to do it is the equivalent of forcing me to slice open my face!
Now that it’s done, and so as to avoid any future awkwardness, I will drop it. But I am pissed about this and as a result will avoid with as much passion as I have in me to double date with you.
This is not funny, I do not like this. I already tried keeping hanging out with you to a minimum, this is why.
Best,
You Sister
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We’ve become a country that values shareholders over citizens, and it’s this whole bullshit about corporations are people. They’re not. … that’s what’s gotten crazy. You can’t be a person if other people can’t kick your ass.
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Jon Stewart, The Daily Show (via madelinelime)
Yep…


