E-mail From the ACLU

I just received this e-mail from the ACLU, and I thought it was important to share in case anyone didn't get it.  In just 3 months we've done some amazing things!

Here's their message:

                                                                            

In the three months since ACLU Action launched, hundreds of thousands of us have stood together to secure crucial victories in the fight for civil liberties. So before we all go off to enjoy fireworks and family barbecues for the Fourth of July, we want to take a moment to celebrate all that we've done together:

• We smashed CISPA. After we learned CISPA would have allowed private companies to hand over our personal information to government agencies (setting the stage early on for our most recent fight against NSA spying), over 50,000 ACLU Action supporters and a big coalition of partners demanded that President Obama promise to veto CISPA if it passed Congress. Then to turn up the heat, hundreds of us chipped in money to take out a full-page ad in Politico, which hit the desks of almost every politician on Capitol Hill. It worked. President Obama issued his veto threat and CISPA failed to move.


• DOMA is history. Edie Windsor had been married to her partner Thea Spyer for years, but after Thea's death they were treated as strangers under federal law. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Edie and deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. This was an incredible moment in a long journey (the ACLU took its first LGBT rights case in 1936), but the fight is not over. In 37 states same-sex couples still cannot marry, so we've just launched a major push to fight for marriage equality in states across country.
  
  Want to stay up to date with the latest news and actions? Like ACLU Action on Facebook.


• Animal abuse whistleblowers in Tennessee won't be jailed. Ag-gag bills that seek to suppress undercover investigations of the inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms have been popping up in a number of states. With our allies in the animal welfare community, over 30,000 ACLU Action supporters pressured Tennessee Governor Haslam to stop ag-gag legislation, ensuring that whistleblowers are not criminalized for practicing free speech. On May 13th, the Governor vetoed the bill.


• Bayli Silberstein secured her right to form a Gay-Straight Alliance. After her year-long fight to form a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at her school, over 50,000 ACLU Action supporters stepped up to stand with 14-year-old Bayli against the school board's proposal to ban all extra-curricular clubs. We flew a plane banner over their board meeting, packed with hundreds of supporters, to make sure they heard our message. The board finally relented when faced with a lawsuit and Bayli's GSA is now able to meet, affirming Bayli and other students' right to organize freely against homophobia.


• Private companies can no longer patent our natural DNA. Myriad Genetics' patents on two important genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) make critical tests for genetic predisposition to cancer inaccessible for many people - like our client, Kathleen Maxian, who is now living with late-stage ovarian cancer. Kathleen's story became the centerpiece of our petition demanding the United States Patent and Trademark Office stop issuing gene patents. Soon after, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favor that companies like Myriad cannot patent genes, opening the door for more women like Kathleen to be fully informed of their cancer risks.

This is only the beginning of what we as a community can achieve when we come together to defend all of our rights and liberties. 

Join us on Facebook - and stay connected to the movement to ensure the great promise of liberty is a reality for everyone in our country.

Between last week's Supreme Court decision to curtail the power of the Voting Rights Act, our ongoing struggle against the surveillance state and the battle raging in Texas right now to limit the personal health decisions of women, we know there is still much left to do. Let's keep at it together!

Thank you for making all of these wins possible.
Anthony and the ACLU Action team 

                                                                                 

I hope you're all as exited as I am about these actions.

Vegan Mint Pasta

Today, I was given a great bushel of mint, causing me to think about what I can do with so much fresh mint.  Other than snacking on it, that is.  I decided to make a mint pasta dish!  The majority of the recipes I found I couldn't make due to lack of ingredients and laziness to go to the store, so I made up my own!  Definitely try it, I am enjoying every single bite.


Vegan Mint Pasta

1 cup fresh parsley

1 cup fresh mint

olive oil

8 oz whole wheat pasta

1 bunch broccoli

1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed

1 handful of spinach

salt, to taste

I started by putting the parsley, mint, and olive oil in the food processor and ran it until it looks like pesto.  I salted it a little, but not too much.  (I'm not sure how much olive oil I used, I just dumped some in.  I never measure olive oil, so all of this is guess work in this recipe.)

Meanwhile, boil the pasta until al dente.  After draining, put a little olive oil in to keep the pasta from sticking.

In a large pan on high heat, I cooked the chopped broccoli for about 5 minutes in olive oil.  Usually, I either give the stock to my dog as a snack or add it in.  Today I did a little bit of both.  I always salt my broccoli when I cook it, but be careful not to add too much, you just want to bring out good flavors.  I added the garbanzo beans, and after about 3 more minutes, I mixed everything together in the pasta pan.  Then, I added the spinach.  This allows it to wilt a little, but mostly stay stiff.  If you want more silted lettuce, add it to the skillet after the garbanzo beans, mix it up, and then dump it in the pasta.  I also should mention that I like my vegetables crunchy, so if you like your's more soft, cook the broccoli longer over lower heat.

Serve and enjoy!

                           

I have to say, I did an amazing job.  This recipe is just the perfect combination of fresh-lighness, from the mint, and hearty meal.  Also, the mint and the parsley together are amazing!  I might use this combination for my morning smoothies, too!

Why I Love Cliches

At work today, my boss said, "Well, even though it's a cliche; you win some, you lose some."

I responded, "Cliches are cliches for a reason."

Which is true.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and cliches are cliches because they really do touch on the reality of the human experience, just a little piece of the human experience packed into a nice little package that can be used whenever you need.  And they're catchy.  Whatever poetic or intense experience you have is not any less meaningful when placed inside this package.  If anything, it validates you and your experience as normal and human.  It lets you know that you are not alone.

In the work we do at the veterinary clinic I work in, things sometimes are a matter of life and death (and sometimes not, making the sarcastic version of this valid as well.)  The situations she was talking about were.  But you know what?  Life is hard, and it's like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going to get.  But despite that, I love it.  Really, how else are you going to get through this?  Because love is blind.

I recently read an article about how Lana Del Rey is nothing but cliches, and apparently this is why music snobs dislike her.  I agree with this article completely; this might be why I absolutely love Lana Del Rey.  I found her music when I was going through a break-up with someone who both treated me wonderfully and like shit at the same time, and it was a break-up that wasn't my choice.  Her first album was just a musical embodiment of this confusion, and while it's a long series of cliches, it was what I was experiencing and therefore comforted me.  I'm sure if she was more poetic about the lyrics, she wouldn't be as disliked as much.  But then, would the message get across as well?  I maintain, no.

Many movies are just drawn out, artistic versions of cliches.  While most movies with romance involved embody "love conquers all", there are indie films that "hipsters" love that are also a drawn out cliche.  Take Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for instance.  The move can be summed up in fourteen words: "It's better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all."  Does this mean that this movie was not beautiful and heart-breaking and soul-wrenching?  I supposed that's up to the viewer, but I maintain, no.  It is still one of my favorite movies, and maybe even more so because these fourteen words are true.  And see?  See how true it is?  But we have this package to put it in so that we don't have to show this movie to everyone every time what we really want to say is, "It's better this way."

I decided to look up cliches while writing this post, and found quite a few I didn't know.  This one is my favorite that I found:

Life is such, and it's getting sucher and sucher.

My Body is a Stereotype

Today, I am recovering from a little adventure in the ER I had yesterday.  Not the endoplasmic reticulum, because I would have had to have been shrunk down to super tiny and had a lot of fun, probably a lot like a water slide.  No, the Emergency Room.

It turns out I may be the literal embodiment of the hippie anti-bigpharmacutical, pro "let thy food be thy medicine" ideology.  Not only is all of my sustenance derived from non-violent methods (as plants don't feel pain), I am also apparently allergic to medicine.  Since I was a baby, I've been allergic to penicillin and penicillin derived medicines, mostly amoxicillin.  That's right; the drug that spearheaded Western medicine's dive into the taking a pill to cure your ails culture, my body rejects.  And now the pattern is continuing.

I had been taking this new drug for about ten days, and two days ago my body up and decided, "hey, you've been doing well, but fuck you because damn the man," or something.  So I woke up feeling not right: swollen lymph nodes, achy body, head ache, but no fever, so I went into work.  I didn't feel like smoking or drinking coffee, so I knew I was definitely sick, but I figured it was a cold.  After lunch, though, I noticed I had a really bad rash all over my chest.  I took a Benadryl and went home.  When I took a shower, I saw that the rash was all over my body, really puffy and itchy, and when I took my temperature again it was at 101 degrees.  Not horribly high, but high enough to know that maybe I wasn't just getting a cold.  Well, that and the horrible, horrible rash.

When I woke up the next day after sleeping for about 12 hours straight, I still had a fever, so I called into work.  Thank god, because when I got to the hospital they couldn't take my blood pressure while I was standing because it had dropped so much.  Next stop: emergency room.  I've never been wheeled anywhere in a wheel chair before, which I thought was reserved for people who were really sick and pregnant women, so I was pretty embarrassed... but I guess I was one of those really sick people, having no blood pressure and all.  After a couple of hours I was as good as new!  Well, as good as slightly used with a few more scuff marks.  Intravenously I got two kinds of antihistamines, a steroid, anti-nausea medication, and a liter of fluids.  I also got a shot of epinephrine, or adrenaline for ye layfolk.  So far, no adverse reactions to any of that.  Not really looking forward to the bill.

Western medicine isn't all bad, but had I not been poisoned by it, I wouldn't have had to be saved by it, either.  But my body refuses to believe in any benefit.  I was taking a drug that could have really helped me and my state of life, but my body refuses to accept that.  "All a person needs is to eat well and exercise.  Have some hobbies, too, probably," it says.  Next thing I know I'll be showing up at classes on how to make my own body wash out of weeds and hemp.  I'll try to smoke a cigarette with one hand and the other will put it out.  Maybe my body knows best, but damn if I can't have my vises.  I may be one refused beer away from making my own clothes and smelling like patchouli for no reason at all.

I even have a hippie tattoo... oh god.

Dogfighting Hypocrisy

On my day off, I decided to sleep in until 11am, make a tofu scramble breakfast burrito, and watch "Animal Cops: Houston."  This particular episode of ACH involved busting a dogfighting opperation, including watching a video (which was completely disgusting).  One of the investigators was speaking on how these poor animals were just doing what their "masters" wanted and how horrible it is for people to use animals for this kind of entertainment.  I completely agree; I love this show because it does show and speak on these issues, but I wonder if this kind of entertainment is different from that kind of entertainment...

I'm not saying I know anything about this man who was saying this, but statistically, he is most likely not vegan.  And statistically, the majority of the people who watch this show are most likely not vegan.  Yet because they enjoy ACH they are probably morally opposed to dog fighting.  And this is where the hypocrisy come in: how can someone be disgusted by one kind of abuse of animals and not another?  Why are dogs considered superior to cows, chickens, turkeys, horses, buffalo, and all other kinds of animals murdered for their flesh?

Dogfighting is a form of entertainment, but so is the consumption of meat

Humans do not need meat to survive.  There is absolutely no nutritional benefit to eating meat that isn't healthier when obtained from a plant food, and in fact, there is peer reviewed evidence that suggests that eating animal-based foods will do nothing but make you sick.  That is: higher chance of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, just to name a few.  It would be surprising for me to hear that someone didn't know that to have a healthier diet you need to decrease animal based foods in all forms and increase fresh foods and vegetables - isn't that common sense?

Therefore, the only benefit I can logically find from eating meat is cultural.  It is entertaining to eat meat because meat has a lot of fat.  That, and all of the chemicals added to the animal's food when it was alive and the chemicals added to the flesh after it was killed, create a chemical reaction in the brain that makes you feel like you're eating something satisfying, when really it's pretty empty as far as actual nutritional content and ability to keep you alive and healthy.

Eating meat must also make people feel powerful.  It puts humans in the position of being at the top of the food chain.  It makes humans have dominion over all other creatures, because "Man is almighty," forget about god.  We like the idea of being Man the Hunter because, well, humans have huge egos and are incredible narcissists.  None of the other creatures on earth give a shit about this, yet humans are NUMBER 1!!! in a contest that doesn't even exist.  Tearing into a sentient being's flesh with your teeth is a very powerful image, and does create a power dynamic... but the problem is that that dynamic has been bastardized in our society, and is becoming more so in societies all over the world.  My opinion is that all living creatures should be respected and equal, and that that dynamic should not exist, but that is probably too radical or something.

Meanwhile, as we're horrified by dogfighting, we allow factory farms to continue to be legal (there is so much information about factory farming beyond that link, which is pretty expansive.  Try here for an introduction).  In fact, these factory farms are encouraged to be treat the animals poorly in order to increase efficiency.  And actually, those which are corporately owned are legally obligated to make more money, no matter the sacrifice.

Dogfighting is a form of entertainment, but so are commercials

There is a commercial on TV right now where a manic-looking grandfather tied strings to two dead chicken bodies, making them dance, and the grandchildren are making the music for this puppet show of HORRORS!

Just watch:

But seriously, it's pretty disgusting, once you think about it.  At first I was just bemused.  Then, it made me disgusted.  Then, it made me angry... and reminded me of something:  Remember when American soldiers in Afghanistan were taking pictures with the dead bodies of the Afghans they had killed and the Afghani suicide bombers, smiling and laughing?  This has happened a few times.  Those soldiers had been forced into an environment were the people from the country we're fighting are no longer seen as being human.  They had been forced to lose some of their own humanity.  This always happens in war: in order for soldiers to kill, those other people have to be dehumanized, and usually demonized.  This is the exact same way we treat the animals in our lives: chickens are not thinking, feeling, calculating creatures that want happiness and comfort, and want to avoid pain and suffering.  They are bodies, and those bodies do no deserve respect.

When those pictures came out of the soldiers, the country was shocked and disgusted. We discussed what war does to soldiers, and if there is a way we can fix the situation, and what we should do with the soldiers, because what happened was wrong.  I argue that these soldiers were doing the same thing with those human bodies that our greater society does with non-human animal bodies.  We as a society have lost that same piece of our humanity that those soldiers did, but since humans are on some higher level, it became noticeable with them, and is not with this commercial.

There are examples of it everywhere, but I chose this commercial is because of the subtlety and the normalcy of it.  Once the subtle and the normalized become noticed as wrong, then the more obvious becomes glaring.  Dogfighting is one of those examples.  We consider there to be something wrong with people that abuse dogs and cats.  It is a recognizable wrong in our culture.  It has been linked to human abuse.  We know it's morally wrong.  But the most subtle has always been more confusing.

I know you're thinking, 'why should I care?' (and I know this because you're human and that makes you a selfish jerk).  The thing is, all animal abuse is linked to human abuse, not just the abuse of the animals we choose to respect.  In fact, that lack of respect may be one of the major problems in the US today, and we learn it first from the animals in our lives, then from out peers, and then from the greater society.  Of course we respect our elders, but why respect something or someone you consider lower that you on the "food chain?"  And eventually, that means that the CEO billionaire dehumanizes the poor person in their mind, and economically abuses them.  Let's be real, our economy isn't getting better.  The only way it will is if the ones at the top reclaim that part of their humanity that they have lost, and do what they need to do to fix the economy, and that requires respecting all people and all creatures.

Dogfighting is disgusting and horrible and sad.

But the way we treat many of the other animals in our society is disgusting and horrible and sad.  It is hypocritical to care about one and not the other.  If we start thinking about these other instances as the same lacking in morality, only then can we start fixing ourselves as people, because it cannot be denied that something is seriously and deeply wrong.

Growing Out Short Hair

Even though there are a lot of blogs with these kinds of posts, I know I read and am reading all of them every time I decide to grow my hair out.  This seems to happen a lot because every time I get past the awkward stage I just cut it really short again.  Or decide to be stylish and get a mo hawk.  But I was going through old pictures and when it jumped from shaved head to long hair I realized I really do miss it.  So, it's happening.  It's really happening.  I'll tell you about it.

Hopefully this time I can avoid the looking-like-a-little-boy phase.  Let's find out!

I'll start with mo hawk phase, because the rest was grown out in the past and this is the most recent issue.

I'm not going to say that it looks really good on me or anything, you can make that call.  I think it did.  I did the stylish, chilled out version, which is pretty cute.

I think the only way to grow it out is to trim it down to a pixie cut.  Just cut the long strip, not the sides, dumb dumb.  So, I trimmed it down:

Apparently I wear this shirt a lot.

Devotion: no kids on drugs.

By "kids" I mean "children."

So, I let it grow out.  Since I lost the better pictures of my hair as it grew out, I'll just show you how nerdy I am, and that as this grew out without cutting, it looked pretty ok.

Also, a cute picture with my dog!

Anyway, your hair will get long enough where you decide you're bored again, and Hey!  Why not get a perm!  I mean, it's still pretty short, but fuck it, do it anyway.  And then this happens:

Which looks a lot like this:

But then you realize that this:

Reminds you a lot of this:

And looking like Bob Dylan is way better than looking like Larry.  It turns out, having a perm with sort hair is awesome, and you can style it to look very fashion-y.  Though it's still Day 1, I know form experience that hair styles tend to get better over time, so I'm pretty damn happy with it.  Plus, now I can pin it back to a curly-type mo hawk, because everything about the 80s is fabulous.  Bam.  Everything is a possibility!  The world is my hair-ouster!  Something I don't recommend eating.

It looks like the best way to avoid looking like a child is to not cut the sides of your hair while your growing it out, so it stays layered.  And that's pretty much it.  I feel that now that since my hair is long enough to get a perm, about 10 months later, this post has served its purpose.

Good Luck.