Gay Baby Feet Abortion . . . AND ENGLAND!

So, this garbage came across my Facebook feed today, drew from me an immediate and strong response.

The garbage:

"If most of my Facebook friends are going to support people who are gay by posting the red equal sign, I am going to post two feet, the feet represent the millions who never get to breathe the air of this world, who never feel love let alone get married, those who never have the chance to have children or go to school or do anything many gays are afforded the privilege to do. They are never given this chance because a human decides that their life is unimportant because of a defect or being an inopportune time for the person who conceived them. This is for the millions of children aborted yearly. Talk about rights being denied."

And my Response:

No need to consider the rights of women who are told that they must bear children against their will, their bodies used and their lives torn to bits because a bunch of people seem to think it's their right to impose their faith on others, though.  Right? Even if we accept that a fetus is "a human life" (and I don't--it's a human life like an acorn is an oak tree or an egg is a chicken), since when do we force one human being to support another human being, against their will, using their own body? What next? Blood "donation" squads grabbing you off the street and forcing you to give blood because someone needs it? How about organs ala Monty Python? Seriously, you don't need that WHOLE liver, you don't need BOTH kidneys, so FORK OVER because someone else NEEDS it to survive! What, that's not okay? That's wrong? The government shouldn't be allowed to require you to use your body against your will to sustain someone else? Hmmm. Maybe you're not so "pro-life" after all. Maybe you're just "pro-fetus." Or, taken at its most basic, most obvious, maybe you're just "anti-woman." Or "pro-slavery."

Okay, the crappy "gays have a lot more rights than ABORTED FETUSES" stuff aside (I know, it's hard to push aside, practically need a bulldozer it's such a weighty pile of manure), and the sickening "I'm going to hop on this bandwagon both to push my agenda AND to lessen the impact of the original movement" thing notwithstanding, what the hell, you know?  I seriously question the stability and psychological wellness of people who spend their days crying over aborted embryos and fetuses when there are real, live PEOPLE all around us who are suffering.  Who need our help.  There are tens of thousands of REAL children in our foster care system who will never know a loving family.  And you want to boob about the imaginary lives non-people might have had, had they actually developed normally in the womb and become humans? 

You need to grow up.  I mean, I support your right to FEEL that way, but your right to enforce your religion or wonky idea of what is and isn't a "person" ends when it forces women to carry unwanted pregnancies.  And shut the heck up with that idiotic "if you want to play, you have to pay/if you didn't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have had sex" garbage!  One, that is totally woman-hating--proposing that women who are sexually active somehow "deserve" the punishment of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.  Two, that's like telling your wife that, if she hadn't wanted her daughter to die in a car accident, she shouldn't have bought a car.  Or telling your neighbor, "Hey, if you didn't want that lightning bolt to blast apart your home, you shouldn't have built a house."  It's disingenuous vomit, and you know it.  

And speaking of vomit?  "What if Einstein's mother had gotten an abortion?"  Goodness.  And what if Hitler's mother had gotten an abortion?  What if a runaway milk cart had taken out Abraham Lincoln or a shark had meandered miles upstream to take a chunk out of Mark Twain?  What if, what if, what if?  It's a stupid question, and it doesn't mean anything.  

Sorry, sidetracked a little there.  Fact is, I support your right to FEEL however, and also support your right to then LIVE as you BELIEVE, i.e., don't ever terminate a pregnancy.  But that's where it ends.  Just as MY being pro-choice shouldn't result in YOUR being forced to terminate a pregnancy, the reverse is also true--just  because YOU don't think abortion is okay doesn't mean *I* should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.  

*** A small note for the small number of slow, cowardly folk whose courageous defense of "the unborn" goes exactly so far as leaving anonymous comments on a blog?  ANONYMOUS!  There's not enough laughter in the world, so thank you for bringing some my way.  

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Alright, enough of that.

Our boy's oral surgeon appointment went . . . disconcertingly.  Scarily.  The only spot we've been so worried about?  No change, doctor says he's not worried.  But the new spot near the lower right wisdom tooth?  It's not new--it's on last year's x-rays, too, but it's markedly larger this year.  He wants to take a "watch and wait" approach because, again, it's down near that nerve canal.  There's another spot up near the wisdom tooth in the left maxilla.  It's small.  

What a mess.  Not sure how I feel about waiting another full year before having it checked again.  Seems . . . stupid.

Here are the x-rays for comparison:

Oh, there's also another spot, can't see it well with the scans, between the left mandibular bicuspids.  It's got that "radiolucent with a radiopaque halo" gig going on.  Whatever it is, you can see how the teeth have angled/grown around it.  He says he's not worried.  I'm worried.  I'm thinking I'm worried enough to wait six months, then seek out a second opinion.  

Just to see.

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Since I'm on a roll, let's talk about marriage equality.  Or, rather, let's talk about some of the memes going around promoting marriage equality.  Here's one in particular:

Okay, straight up, flat out--who cares?  I mean, I get the sentiment, but who cares?  Whether you embrace the particular mythology or no, religion has no place in our government.  So who CARES if Jesus or whomever did or didn't wax whatever on whichever subject?  Doesn't matter.  What does matter?

That homosexuals are.  That's really it, the central thing--they ARE.  And therefore, they should be entitled the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.  

And I KNOW that's not in the Bible.

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I saw a really, REALLY horrid wallpaper-carpet combo yesterday--let me go find it!

Ta Daaaaaaa!

Oh, and I nearly forgot--I just wanted to say I LOVE ENGLAND!  I do, you know?  I love England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.  Just love the living daylights out of them.  And yes, I absolutely recognize the differences, issues, and histories of each.  So, while I love England, I also think maybe she needs a bit of a serious dressing down for being such a bully for so long (good thing the U.S. stepped up to accept the "World Bully" mantle, huh?).  I adore Llewelyn Fawr, Robert the Bruce, and Brian Boru.  Oh, and Simon de Montfort.  That would be Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester and 1st Earl of Chester, not the other Simons de Montfort who came before.  What a guy, huh?  Sure, flawed as all get-out, but what a guy.

Mostly, I'm just pandering here.  It's not that I don't love the "British Isles."  Oh, I do--so much so that we have, more than once, tried to figure out how to move there in the long term.  But I'm writing this for a baser reason--I want more readers from that part of the world.  I would love to make that "leap across the pond."

So, was that butt-kissy enough?  Will you give me a read?  Come on, you know you want to!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

It's always something scary. Or irritating.

So, our boy had an appointment for a panoramic dental x-ray today.  You see, a year ago, he had one done, which revealed a small "radiolucent spot with a radiopaque outer rim."  Or some such crap.  We took him to an oral surgeon, much to Blue Cross's chagrin, who didn't want to do much of anything.  He said that, with the placement (directly under the roots of his bottom incisors), anything he did would be potentially devastating.  He recommended a "watch and wait" approach.  He recommended x-rays in a year.

So here we are.  The small spot below the incisors?  The same.  But now there is a much larger, irregularly shaped radiopaque spot underneath our boy's wisdom tooth and extending to just below the adjacent molar.  #31, I believe.  This is big, it's not tiny like the thing under the incisors.  So it's back to the oral surgeon.  The dentist said "it might just be swelling from the wisdom tooth starting to impact," but this is the same dentist who totally missed my salivary stones and insisted that pulling our boy's deciduous canine wouldn't inspire the adult tooth to come in (even though, a year earlier, that's exactly what his old dentist did for the canine on the other side, and it worked).  So I don't know.

I don't know.

What I do know?  Is that we don't have dental insurance.  We have GEHA, which is a supplemental thing, but when you're knocking a three grand bill down to fifteen hundred, it's still a grand more than you have.  No idea how much this is going to cost, only know that we don't have it.  But we have to know what's going on here.  Our insurance really balked at covering the Oral Surgeon last time, tried very hard to insist it was DENTAL, which they don't cover.

Oh, sweetie.  Be okay.  Please.

Today's x-ray, unmarked

And labeled for your viewing pleasure

So, the dog's training is paid for.  I actually thought we were going to wait a month, see how my medical stuff comes out, but it's done now.  Gotta tell you, I don't want a pelvic, I don't want a mammogram, I don't want to step on that scale and have to feel like hell about myself.  But I DO want the CLEAR results of that mammogram, I DO want someone to say, "Everything looks normal," and I absolutely NEED my metoprolol script re-upped.  And if I don't go for the pelvic, then I have to go to the GP/PCP and ask HER, and I sure don't want to do that.

Medical care exhausts me.  Co-pays exhaust me.  But, being someone who's lived without health insurance for long periods?  It could be worse.  I recognize that.  

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Been reading a lot about the Steubenville rapists.  Been seeing all the sympathy rolling their way.  

Because, hey, if you can't blame the victim, who CAN you blame?  Not the RAPISTS, clearly.

Let's get something straight here--no matter what she wears, says, does, no matter how she acts or how much she drinks, no matter where she walks, drives, or passes out, the RAPIST is the one who calls the tune, the RAPIST is the one who decides to RAPE.  I don't want to hear about the rapists' promising athletic careers or academic whatever-the-hells or, gosh, how sad that they'll be registered sex offenders.  What else do you suggest they register as?  They are, after all, SEX OFFENDERS.  Stop acting like they're poor little victims.  Their poor little victim had her name, her reputation, and her very life strewn out and torn to bits in court in defense of rapists.

Of rapists.

If you don't like rape, don't rape.  If you don't want your sons serving time for rape, teach them not to rape.  Teach them to respect women--all women.  Teach them that their hands and their penises stay to themselves unless expressly invited.  Teach them that alcohol poisoning and Rohypnol  are not forms of consent.  Unconscious or barely conscious can NEVER give consent.  

Period.

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Hubby picked up The Hobbit on Blu Ray last night.  From what I understand, the wonky 48 frames per second gig won't translate.  I get the feeling I'm glad about that.  Just finished watching it, and I'll get into it tomorrow.  Not feeling all that charitable tonight, will probably be less critical after a night's sleep.

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I want to take a moment to discuss "slactivism."  You know, the whole "I clicked a button, I forwarded an email, I shared a meme, I've DONE something!" thing that seems so common these days.  

Hey, I share memes--not because I think I'm raising money or making change.  I know better.  I share memes because they're funny or because they reflect my feelings about something, and I share them with folks I know likely share my opinion.  Every once in a while, if I know someone's open or on the fence, I'll share something that I think might nudge them over.  If it's something not wildly inflammatory or insulting, that is.  I don't consider that "slactivism" because I don't think I'm being an "activist," I don't think I'm accomplishing anything other than amusing myself and my friends.

I guess, to me, the term "slactivism" refers to people who post a meme (or a magnetic ribbon on their SUV) and feel they've done something, like their obligation to be active and humanitarian has been fulfilled.  You know, with stupid crap like this:

Which came with the following stupid caption:  

I am not asking you to hit like but i am asling

you to please Share .

Poor baby Suffering from Cancer , For every

share of this pic , Facebook will donate $1 to

the parents of this baby .

___________Sharing will Take Secs ___________

_______________ Please Help____

Okay, folks?  People?  Please?  This sort of thing is ALWAYS BS, okay?  ALWAYS.  Facebook/Microsoft/Apple/FEMA/Walmart/WHOMEVER is NOT going to donate WHATEVER amount to WHATEVER sick baby based upon your clicks, forwards, or shares.

Period.  So stop it.  You're like a virus, you just eat up bandwidth and waste people's time.  Stop it.

STOP IT!

On a related note?  "LIKE this soldier/baby/child-in-a-wheelchair/legless-dancer/bedraggled puppy, SCROLL if you hate them" memes?  Those are also not activism, they don't accomplish anything, and trying to guilt people into sharing your stupid crap is . . . well, it's stupid crap.  Stop that, too.

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And now that I'm all done yelling about stuff, do me a favor?  Check out my comparative reviews of CAMERAS and CHOCOLATE.  Because they really do go together, and if it weren't for cameras and chocolate, I'm not sure life would be worth living.

And that's all, I think.  Except for some bad paneling.  I know, I know, I promised bad RED paneling, but that's on my iPad, and I haven't sent it over yet.  Until I do, have some turquoise with  . . . is that coral?  Salmon?  LOL, what ever it is, it's perfectly precious!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ