It's Definitely NYC or Bust for Me

I had the misfortune to read this today.

Since I used to live there many years ago & still have family living there (including my soon to be 1 year old niece), I definitely have some opinions on the matter. For those who aren't familiar with North Carolina, I think some background is necessary.

First off, there are liberals in North Carolina. You could credibly say NC is not really "the South" & not just because of this. It's also because Southern hospitality and some of the conventions associated with Southernism aren't part of NC. Some of them definitely weren't part of my upbringing or experience living or going to school there. If Southern hospitality existed, I wouldn't have gotten the hell I did growing up.

Second, there are people with functioning brains in North Carolina. Save for that Virginia Foxx airhead, you don't see a consistent mob of old white men trying to slam down on women's rights like you do in Texas or Arizona. There are people in North Carolina who aren't racist or ignorant cretins.

Third, not everyone in North Carolina is a God bothering fundamentalist Christian. There are plenty of people who aren't Southern Baptists or even follow the Baptist faith.

I actually know someone who is in public office in my hometown. I don't know his reaction to this but I would hope that he would not be in favor of telling me & every other grown woman what to do with her uterus or making family planning decisions for us. No right minded person is in favor of such things. I really wish the people who were would be tried for treason & removed from public office for violating the basic duties of such. It also makes me think my cats could be better politicians than such asswipes. Even they wouldn't have the gall to create legislation that would have the effect of outlawing abortion & you know cats feel superior to humans. Remember, most cats don't like little babies invading their spaces & taking attention away from them. That whole "cute" competition & all.

If this legislation passes, then trying to send me back to NC or suggesting I go live there again would be in effect imposing a death sentence on me. Remember, I had a tubal so if I got pregnant that pregnancy wouldn't be viable. I guarantee those shitheads would make certain that there was no exception for life of the mother considering they're trying to force rape victims to carry a rapist's child & also give the rapist parental rights once that baby is born in many of these states.

I hope my brother in law gets that vasectomy soon, especially if this garbage passes. I'm sure he'll still get editorialization and whining from providers even with having 3 kids already. Considering that experience with my sister's friend, I don't put it past any doctor down there to ask "What if you want another baby?" even if you've got 6 at home. Nice questions from people who will never take any financial responsibility for those choices.

Recently, I realized that this December will mark 10 years since I escaped from the South. Yes, it WAS an "escape." I got to leave since I got accepted to law school in Connecticut; if I hadn't, I'd have been stuck there at least a few more months & have far less certainty in getting to stay once I moved away since I wouldn't have a law degree to back me up.

I also felt like I was in prison everyday I lived in the South. Atlanta was a little better since it was a major city and I didn't have to hang out with people I knew in middle school (who almost all went to my high school) but there was still that whole Southern thing I didn't like (mostly the racism). In Atlanta, at least, it wasn't the norm to be a single mother living with your parents or married & living in a trailer park with no college education in your early 20s. Not the life I wanted or aspired to; some of us are different & have different ambitions in life. North Carolina was not a place where I felt my ambitions and goals were the norm, at least not in circles I had access to.

Who doesn't feel this recent push on outlawing abortion is an attempt to shove Christian mores down our collective throats? I see it for what it is. Oh, and you are NOT "pro-life" when you think it's a-okay for people with no money, maturity or basic brain functioning to breed. You are a fascist asshole. You are a closet rapist since you think babies are a punishment for having sex. You are a sexist who thinks all women are good for is breeding & raising children, even if some woman hates her kids and resents the entire enterprise. In short, you're a dumbass. Just admit it & stop wasting time coloring this as any more than what it is.

When will these fossils die & burn in Hell, I wonder? That's where those types are certainly going considering they run around judging others & desperately need to get lives. Not to mention some of these legislators have plenty of skeletons in their closets, as plenty of Internet commenters will point out.

Not to mention NC has enough problems with the recent cut to unemployment benefits to not be dealing with this crap. Wake up, morons! The 1950s have long since passed. We live in the age of online porn, gay marriage and sexting. Join us or go to the Middle East where they live in the Dark Ages. I'm sure they'll welcome your attitude there along with your fundamentalist Christianity.

I think I'll have to have a celebration to commemorate 10 years out of the South. Or maybe we should rename some states & regions to the American Middle East.

General Musings, Part 4

Just realized more links on here that I was going to comment on. A lot of them refer back to rants/posts I've already done so please use the keywords to find them.

This is why you make sure to sign releases & have your legal documentation in order (ideally, you get an entertainment lawyer). You never know if you're going to become famous & even if you don't, it's still a headache to get sued even if the person suing you is a big fat liar. I don't know the details of this one but little surprises me these days & I'm just waiting for the money hungry types to come out of the woodwork in the future once my ventures gain more prominence.

Here's another interesting story.

Personally, Elton John makes a good point. Most of the entertainment industry would shut down in this country if gay people refused to work due to their lack of rights in particular states in this country. My personal views aside, I wish some of these people exercised as much effort in protecting the rights of citizens in this country who are dealing with much worse.

Finally, this ridiculous article.

You want to check out in the fastest way of all? Go to Stop & Shop where they have the cool scanners that keep you from dealing with all that nonsense. Demand your grocery store to follow suit, especially if you're a stockholder. I know in the Northeast there's all that union noise but why isn't this commonplace in the South?

Also, I don't abide by any company keeping workers that refuse to do their jobs or can't do them even after lots of training. You can't do much if the CEO's doing that but I have to wonder why any CEO would deliberately behave in a manner that causes his/her business to suffer such as continuing to pay good money to some flunkie who can't do their job. With all the unemployed people around, you could find someone who's twice as skilled as such a flunkie & who'll work for 1/2 the pay.

Perhaps I don't care & I'm heartless but I do believe in a thing called personal responsibility & work ethic. If you want to be a smart ass to people, then work as a collections agent. Become a lawyer & then do what I'm doing; no one expects me to be nice & it's bad for a lawyer to let people walk all over him/her. These stores would save on paying labor & could keep the people who are good at the jobs for checking IDs + doing the stuff you can't do on the scanners. Corporations are already hated by the public & I don't see Wal-Mart being overly concerned w/their image problems, so I really don't get why they don't just go full steam ahead on this.

As for sympathy to the people who are getting attitude w/me b/c of their paycheck? Not my fault you hate your job. Take that complaint up w/the main office instead of being nasty to customers. I did my retail stint & I'd never have done that. I also complain on people for stuff like that since I have this history & indeed could do the job better than some of the types I've had to deal with.

Oh, and I have even less sympathy for people who complain about situations & NEVER do anything to make it better for themselves like finding a job they'd like or getting an education to get their dream job.

My view is if you can't do something better than whoever you're complaining about, you need to shut up. If you can, then speak up. I won't trash someone's drawing skills or his/her cartwheel but I will complain about bad singing, customer service skills, public speaking, film plots, anything I have enough knowledge & skill in to have a valid gripe.

Doing otherwise would make me look stupid & have no credibility.

Debt & the Inevitable Public Outcry

Okay, I found this story on debtors going to jail a bit of a misnomer. It's not really "debtor's prison" but more like "don't miss your court hearings & if you didn't know about them, yell loudly about lack of service." I don't have the official source b/c of MSN's stupid attempts to make you do Bing searches to get anything.

One time, my late brother in law was taken to court by creditors over an unpaid debt. The judge asked him if he could pay; he said no. Creditors didn't get their money & because he had no income, there was nothing to garnish. Not to mention that by law, you can't garnish more than a certain % of someone's pay & you can't garnish wages to the point of the person becoming homeless.

So stay out of Minnesota, Arizona & Washington where the court system is apparently pro-creditor & wishes to avoid pesky little things like due process toward the average person. Any police officers who refuse to jail people on stuff like this will deserve esteem in my book. You can't blindly follow orders on everything or you end up just another drone. Have some of these judges lost their rational sense or a duty to uphold sane laws as opposed to being mercenaries for the aristocracy? You're just encouraging a debtor to go kill a man so he'll have a real reason to be in jail or prison instead of a few grand in credit card debt.

Will student loan providers be far behind? What good will putting bright minds in prison do? You don't want people like me in w/the general prison population b/c I tend to give others ideas & would likely attempt to organize a prison riot to make the one in Natural Born Killers look like a minor scuffle. We were also the classic "good kids" in school & I think lawyers would be doing lots of prison breaks.

Hearing about this already ignites my righteous indignation but I believe in not going down without a fight unlike some people.

So reading about this as well also interested me. Had shades of my family relationships, oddly enough.

I can also see that happening even though most people (presumably not living in dysfunctional families but we know it's a crock) would find it off. A lot of blood relatives hate each other.

I tell you this: if I was her, I'd tell the father to piss off permanently & disown him. He'd have been dead to me ages ago. When your family life was not Leave it To Beaver, that word doesn't have the same meaning for you. Family in my book are those people who are there for you no matter what, don't have an angle every time they talk to you & accept you for who you are. They might not like when you do something but they won't ditch you for it.

I have a somewhat shaky relationship w/my father in particular but I will give him this: he's never let me push him away. I know I've pushed him away pretty hard & in my experiences in the legal clinic, I saw fathers give up. This father is apparently another one who didn't bother to have that relationship & gave up.

I still don't have a perfect relationship w/the man but I appreciate who he is much more than I did as a kid. I could never see him trying to do that & I know he's not trying to ride my coat tails. However, I don't delude myself into saying he'll change or that his addiction is okay w/me; it's not.

When you hear about stuff like this, though you appreciate what you have a little more than you did. That's one reason I think working in the legal clinic was so valuable to me; it made me appreciate my family, screwed up as it may be, a little more.

More Interesting Links & Comment on Them

If you're a believer of common sense in immigration policies, take a look at this petition. I haven't signed it b/c I hate logging into that website & most petitions/stances of people don't match up to mine but here you go.

The boycotting junk ticks me off & b/c of it, I think the supporters ought to go out of their way to support Arizona. I can certainly relate to how those citizens must feel.

Oh, and if you dare think that only white racists support enforcement of immigration laws & kicking illegals out, you'd be dead wrong. I have heard about & know of many people who came to this country LEGALLY + learned English who hate the freeloaders & think they should get out without any amnesty. Their feeling is "if we did it legally, you shouldn't be rewarded for doing it illegally." Plus, the freeloaders get lumped in with the legal immigrants who aren't breaking the law, flying their native country's flag in protests or demanding accommodation in a foreign land. Who can blame those people for being pissed off?

Bravo to this guy as well.

I 100% agree w/making English the national language. It's pathetic when you can't go to a local establishment & find an English speaker. A major city like NYC or some area where there's a large concentration of foreign speakers & long established neighborhoods is one thing. When you're seeing this in places like NC or areas without that tradition, it's a different story.

It still pisses me off to go someplace in America where there's NO English signage on a business. I saw a lot of it in in NC in places where this didn't used to be the case.

I think that should be mandatory in places without that tradition & ideally, I'd like to see that all over America; otherwise, you're pretty much announcing to me that you're a racist + don't care to have my business. I really don't blame people who have an English only policy or won't accommodate people who could learn English but refuse to; my husband has co-workers from other countries & they find it distasteful when people don't adapt to the ways of this country.

End of that rant for now. On another front, I saw this story just this morning.

So I have to wonder: what do the law school scam blog folks have to say about this? I also wonder who thought a high school diploma was enough until just recently. This is old news. Doing something beyond high school was expected in my household, especially for me.

I have a question for the President myself on the issue of higher education: what about paying for it?

More undergraduates have taken on private loans & aid has gone down for them. For that matter, what about making graduate education available for all qualified people & not just those coming from money? What are your plans for that one, hmmm? How about reforming the law school/attorney system while we're at it considering much of our nation's legislators & you are attorneys?

If you think the current system is fair or adequate, you are living a sheltered life & haven't got a clue about the real world. You're one of those people I could demoralize in about 5 seconds by taking you apart emotionally. I haven't personally done that to someone yet since I'm saving that for when I'm downright pissed off at someone & don't want to ever deal with him/her again. It's a line I don't cross with those I care about or who I consider friends; call it an unofficial agreement. They don't whine to me about not getting something I'll never be able to afford & I don't call them a whiny brat who'd never survive a real crisis.

If you're young, it's a real problem to think that way; at least older people lived in different times & can be forgiven for being clueless on this issue. Many of them are more likely to have earned their way & are aware of being out of touch unlike some younger people.

More Comments About Ineffective Government on Immigration Issues

So Arizona has decided to step up its crackdown on illegal immigration while Washington decides to employ illegals for their personal services & whine about problems without offering solutions. Bravo to them! See this story.

As to the civil rights complainers, read my previous entry on illegal immigration & my personal experiences w/that situation. It is my view that you DO NOT get the same constitutional rights as citizens. You want the protection of America's laws, maybe you should legally become an American instead of popping out babies you don't care for & "protesting" while you go out harassing citizens.

Those who aren't doing this aren't exactly stepping up & calling out the guilty ones, now are they? Maybe if you DID then people wouldn't hate you so much.

In light of all this, I find this story particularly interesting as well.

Definitely count me in that group that distrusts the government. If you are an intelligent person, you kind of have to. You also can't go around thinking anyone is going to care about your self-interest or have your back as the same level you would, regardless of what they might say. The minute you do, you're in big trouble.

In light of my history, it shouldn't be a shocker that I don't really trust most people & institutions. In my own high school, a teacher was fired my senior year for sleeping w/a student. She apparently took the male in question to the guidance office one day & one of the guidance office staff saw some things; I worked in that office at the time & heard about it from the adults who worked there. Another one was known to sexually harass young women. It just builds & builds from there.

Some of the stories & tales I've heard from various people in my life are so bleak/depressing/etc. that I should have no faith in humanity at all. To be honest, I don't have all that much & it's why I prefer dealing w/animals, in particular cats b/c I grew up with them.