It is still illegal to own a vibrator in the state of Alabama. State senator Tom Butler, who was born in 1944, made it illegal in 1998 with a law called the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act. Butler is a Republican (of course) who also helped make abortion a crime with no exemptions for rape or incest in 2019.
Perhaps Senator Butler got this idea from Sharia law, which also bans sex toys.
An artist named Yu Buk had an art exhibit in a museum in South Korea that consisted of live goldfish starving to death in sealed intravenous bags hanging from the ceiling. There were 15 IV bags with one live, starving, cramped goldfish in each. One third of them starved to death before patrons of the gallery and animal rights advocates complained and demanded the tortured fish display be taken down. The gallery obliged and were able to save some of the fish.
The artist was apparently annoyed about it and released this statement to The Korea Times newspaper:
"The slow deaths of the goldfish were meant to be a part of my piece. Now that the fish are gone, it lost its meaning as a work of art…”
Asshole.
This artist has also created works by applying adhesive liquids to
surfaces and luring flying insects to it with bright lights, then displaying the dead, stuck bugs and calling it his art.
Asshole.
Is there no limit to what humans will do in the name of entertainment?
Source: artnet.com
This photo was taken 18 years ago during the March for Women's Lives
that took place in Washington, D.C. on April 25, 2004. This picture
hangs on my living room wall as a reminder of the event that I proudly
took part in. I'm standing in the front, holding the "Keep Abortion
Legal" NOW sign and sporting the proud smile of a person determined to
keep women's healthcare decisions between her and her doctor, rather
than throwing them into the hands of legislators who do not have women's
best interests at heart.
I was a member of the National Organization for Women back then, and we
teamed up with NARAL Pro-Choice NH leaders to secure a bus ride to D.C.
together. As a group with varying ages and diverse social, economic,
religious, political, and cultural backgrounds, we came together to form
one group whose voice wanted (needed) to be heard. Women's reproductive
choices were under attack -- as they still are today -- and we were
determined to do something about it.
Once in Washington, the estimated one million marchers broke into
smaller groups that bonded with each other and got to know each other a
little better. My group consisted of a middle-aged to middle-aged-plus
cast of women in varying degrees of physical health. One woman needed a
cane to walk, one had an air cast on her leg from a recent knee surgery,
and one couldn't march very fast due to arthritis, so we accommodated
each other by walking at a slower pace. We stuck together and shared
food and drinks, and when we stopped to pose for the above photo, a
20-something-year-old male thought we were a cool enough group of older
ladies that he asked if he could be in our picture. That's him on the
far right, wearing the white shirt and blue baseball cap. (My apologies
that part of you got cut off in the photo, you awesome young man).
The March for Women's Lives in 2004 was the first time I ever came
face-to-face with anti-choice groups who displayed magnified shock-value
photos of fetuses, positioned themselves to obstruct our route as we
tried to walk by them, and held bull horns a few feet from our ears to
verbally assault us with derogatory names or boom rehearsed and
memorized bible verses at us. Their anger was palpable but, luckily,
none of us were physically harmed by any of them. Though, I did find it
interesting that Fox News' Sean Hannity managed to portray pro-choice
marchers as the angry ones on one of his post-March for Women's Lives
broadcasts.
After the march, we settled on the lawn, sipping water and eating snacks
while we watched and listened to the guest speakers deliver their
thoughts and hopes for the future of women's healthcare and reproductive
freedoms. That was the first time I ever saw Hillary Clinton in person.
She mingled with the crowds and became an average woman, just like the
rest of us. I also saw the Executive Director of the ACLU, Anthony
Romero, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman, National
Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and various star-activists
like Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon,
Ani DeFranco, Ashley Judd, and too many more to name.
The March is still a memorable event for me, and today's shocking Supreme Court decision serves to remind me that the struggle to free ourselves from
the tight hold that legislators have on our bodies is far from over.
I often think about homeless people. I try to understand how they feel. And grasp how awful it must be to have no security, no locked door to keep them safe, and no soft bed to crawl into at night.
Homeless people regularly try to sleep during the day. Sometimes they lay right across the sidewalk or sleep upright, leaning against buildings or telephone poles. They do this because they feel safer closing their eyes in the light of day and in plain sight. Because in the dark of night is when they are most vulnerable … when they are more likely to have their meager belongings stolen. Or get assaulted or even killed.
Not being able to sleep soundly and securely must be draining. Do homeless people feel exhausted all the time?
When I was fresh out of nursing school nearly 30 years ago, I worked the inpatient medical unit of a community hospital just outside of Boston. 12-hour night shifts. And I used to get admissions in the middle of the night of homeless people (mostly men) with various non-life-threatening diagnoses. We called them social admissions which really just meant this person needed a hot shower, a clean bed, nutritious meals, and a soft pillow to rest his head on ... just for a day or two, before going back to the streets.
These men were admitted to the hospital thanks to the kind and caring hearts of the emergency room physicians who had the courageous goodwill to not discharge them to the cold New England streets too quickly. It was often in the middle of Nor’easter snowstorms that social admissions occurred.
In my eyes, homeless patients earned a reputation for being the patients who never rang their call lights and never asked for anything. They never complained, they were never rude, and they were always humble and quiet. They gratefully and graciously accepted whatever food and care and comfort that was offered to them. I would have let them stay in the hospital forever if it were up to me.
Those homeless men I took care of so many years ago taught me a lot. They taught me that homeless people are people, just like us. They have amazing stories to tell, just like us. They have friends and loved ones, just like us. They want comfort and safety and stability, just like us. They try to make the best of their situations, just like us. And they want and deserve a little kindness and consideration, just like us.
With him being all over the news lately and me being 100% Team Johnny, my son (who lives in Los Angeles) went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to take a picture of Johnny Depp's Star and send it to me on Mother's Day.
When he got there, there was a woman laying on the ground, hugging Johnny's star while her husband snapped a picture of her and their two kids stood by watching.
I guess I'm not the only Mom who got Johnny Depp for Mother's Day.
Thank you to my amazing son for this. I love him even more than I love Johnny Depp.
Nevada: A 23 year old woman was acting strangely and told everyone her newborn baby was evil. The father was driving her and the baby to the emergency room for help and had to physically restrain the woman while he was driving because she was trying to suffocate the baby with a blanket on the ride to the hospital.
Wisconsin: A 41 year old woman told police she strangled her 8 year old son to death because the Russian government was planning to kidnap and torture him and she had to kill him to keep him from being tortured. She also tried to drown her 11 year old son, but he survived. She had been watching the Russia-Ukraine War on the news.
Missouri: A 35 year old woman called 911 and said she was being attacked by the devil. The police saw blood on the front steps when they arrived and they had to force their way into the home. They found her 6 year old son's severed head near the front door. The mother was covered in blood and had a knife and a screwdriver and was singing loudly when the police arrived. She had decapitated her child and the family dog.
These are stories that I read in the headlines this past week. These kinds of stories are endless, because women who are mentally ill continue to reproduce and no one ever seems to notice how disturbed they are until their helpless babies have already been tortured and murdered.
Also in the headlines on a regular basis is the growing list of states that are jumping on the anti-choice/anti-abortion/make-abortion-a-crime bandwagon, because (they declare) life is precious and abortion is murder and God created life and they are protecting the babies and they must save the innocents and they love babies, and so on and so on and so on.
Perhaps less energy could be expended on banning abortions and more energy given to taking care of abused, neglected, unwanted, suffering babies and children who have already been born.
I saw a squirrel get murdered on my way to work yesterday. The killer was the tires on the car in front of me. The timing could not have been more perfect for that squirrel to run into the street - right into the passing car. The person driving never saw it coming, but once she hit the squirrel, she swerved ever so slightly toward the curb and her brake lights came on. She looked in her rear view mirror and saw the little guy laying in the road. She realized what happened and I knew she felt bad about it. I don't know how I knew that, but I did.
When he got hit, his little body flipped up in the air and spun around twice like he was doing a somersault, then he landed on the pavement motionless. And when he hit the ground, a brown perfectly round ball slowing rolled away from his little body. That little ball bothered me. Was it a nut from inside his cheek or was it a little squirrel poop that got knocked out of him? It just added to the intensity of it all. That night, I found myself googling pictures of squirrel poop on the internet, because it was weighing on me and I wanted to know what it was. It said squirrel poop is usually little logs, rounded on the ends. So, I'm still not sure but, somehow, the thought of it being poop bothered me more than if it was a nut, because it just made the whole horrible event just that much more undignified for that poor little guy who didn't deserve to die that day.
I'm gonna be thinking about that squirrel for a while.
Did you ever slip into a warm bath and find it so relaxing that you just wanted to close your eyes and fall asleep? Yea, well, sperm feel the same way.
When sperm are placed in a warm bath, they have a hard time keeping their little eyes open (sperm don't really have eyes) and they fall asleep and don't move.
A German woman who is an industrial design graduate from the University of Munich won an award for creating a warm bath for testicles that puts sperm to sleep and acts as a male birth control device.
She was diagnosed with cervical cancer from using birth control pills. Her and her partner decided to find a birth control method that he could use and - GUESS WHAT? - they couldn't find one they liked. So, she invented one.
It's called the COSO male birth control device. It's a little bath tub that you fill with water, hit a button to heat the water, then dip your balls into the warm bath for a few minutes. Sounds fun.
I'm not sure how long the sperm stay asleep, but while they're asleep they're not swimming around looking for an egg.
Here is the link to a Vimeo video showing how it works:
*Spoiler alert! No live balls were used to make this video.
My son once dated a nice girl whose mother was a very
religious woman. She wasn’t just very religious, really, she was one of those angry religious people. The ones who use God to hate others and insult
others and be rude to others.
I hesitate to call her a holy roller because that
seems too jovial of a term to describe her. She worked at her church, in some
capacity or another, and she crusaded to save the planet … so much so that she
did not hesitate to spew hatred toward anyone who she felt was breaking God’s
great planet. Because, of course, God would want his chosen ones – the seers of
the light – to spew anger at anyone who dares not follow the path of
righteousness and holiness and planet saving.
But, I guess my question to her, if she would have given me
the time of day the one and only time I met her instead of dismissing me and
walking away for I’m not sure what reason, would be, “If God is all-knowing and
all-loving and all-everything-perfect-and-wise-and-good, why did he make such a
mess of the human body that he claims to have created?
What was he thinking when he made teeth that rot and
toenails that grow for no apparent reason?
Why do bones break and breasts sag? Why do our ears fill with wax and
why the fuck are the intestines over 15 feet long? – no wonder everyone has
polyps and no one can shit properly.
And why do our hearts have 4 chambers when one big sturdy
chamber probably would have been more efficient. Why do our cells grow
uncontrollably and cause cancer? And why do balls shrink while the sac of skin that
holds them grows longer and longer?!
Why do we get frostbite in the cold weather and heat stroke in the hot weather? And why do so many people need glasses?
Why do our brains shrink as we age and why are so many people sad and mean and lonely and in pain?
Why are people hateful and hurtful and sneaky and dangerous? And why do our bodies have to die?
The Godly answer will be that Eve screwed everything up by eating an apple. But. Come. Now.
Seriously.
If God made us, why aren’t we perfect?