Protests Over a Rule to Protect Health Providers - NYTimes.com
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: November 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

• NaNo update: 2,108 words today puts me at 28,955 total. If all goes well I should crack 30k tomorrow! YAY! :-) Now bed. #
• Why oh why do people have to get up to such retarded shit when I take a day off? And why does my boss think words have no specific meaning? #
• Marketing 101: When ordering promo products, if logo is so small as to be unreadable, marketing value of product is lost. Can I get a DUH? #
• Sure asstard, my presentation was much enhanced by your constantly walking in/out talking on cell phone. Nice standard you’re setting there. #
• Tired of people telling me how they’d euthanize their dog if medical care were more than $XYZ. So… you’re bragging about being heartless? #
• Does Christopher Hitchens style himself some kind of hard-partying playboy? Button your damn shirt. Good. Now here’s your Visine. #
• I am freezing to death. I hate winter, and it’s just now starting. Boo. #
• http://twurl.nl/mjg3zy OK… what? (NSFW) #
• OK @tweetburner you’re sucking harder than ever lately. Here’s the (NSFW) WTF link http://tinyurl.com/2xs5ow #
• I have been angry with, and resentful of, this entire day and have thus written nothing. Not too productive an attitude, I realize. #
• I also find my writing hindered by an abominable lack of cookies in this house. #

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• Ha HA! 5,427 words today puts me at 26,847 total for NaNo, which is now one full day ahead of schedule! Rock on. Only now my wrists hurt. #
• Ugh, Beyonce’s performance of that song=beyond ridiculous. Hello drama. Justin Timberlake=adorable. Love how he can make fun of himself. #
• How did it get to be noon while I was watching cheeseball Sandra Bullock movies? I even got up early! So unfair. #
• Was planning on Celery show later today, but I think I have just figured out that I am too old for that shite, esp on a school night. #

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Brendan Perry - Utopia

I am so hungry for new Brendan Perry, I feel like I can’t wait for next year. This is the teaser for the new album, and I love it already. I can’t ever adequately explain how Brendan Perry’s music captures the cynical romanticism of my personality, but somehow it’s like my whole life is in what he sings. And not in some self-pitying emo way either, but in a “kick your own ass and see what you can do and by the way it’s probably going to suck but do it anyway.” way.

I love him. Here are the lyrics to Utopia.

I feel greater than the sum of all my parts
A domestic beast with a hairy heart
Trapped within a walled suburbia

I’ve found my taste is somewhat underground
Between the shadows and the cracks
I’m building my utopia

I need to break free from all that binds
That makes me old before my time
In this world of dystopia

My love is like a bright guiding light
Shining in the darkness of the night
The star of my utopia

In the motion of the sea
in the air that we breathe
Can you feel me?

In the stars and in the trees
In the song of the bees
Can you hear me?

Caged, golden memories
Time has come
to show your true feelings

I know it’s the only way to be
When the same old feelings
come over me

I feel greater of all the sum of all my parts
A space jockey from a distant star
marooned upon dystopia

I’ve found my taste is somewhat underground
Between the shadows and the cracks
I am building my utopia

In the motion of the sea
In the air that we breath
Can you feel me?

In the stars and in the trees
In the song of the bees
Can you hear me?

Yesterday was a good day. It was miserably cold (for November - which is the same weather that we’ll consider positively spring-like when it shows up again some time in March.) and we saw the first snow flurries of the season. But I didn’t have to go anywhere, so I cocooned here with the dogs, writing and napping and cleaning the kitchen and baking frozen pizza. I wrote more than 5,000 words, and they were pretty easy to write. On Friday I barely yanked 1,000 words out of my highly-recalcitrant brain, and each one hurt. Yesterday’s words practically jumped out onto the page. That’s a nice feeling.

This whole thing with taking all the Fridays in November off to use for extra writing time, it’s not working exactly as I thought it would, but it is really working. Instead of turning into some kind of writing machine on Fridays I’ve been using the day to decompress, run errands, get my mental house in order. And just not having to be in the cosmic shithole of stress and aggravation that is my job, that’s a benefit in and of itself. Then on Saturdays I can get some writing done, since I don’t have to use that day to decompress.

I’ve also been going out on Fridays, as usual, and that is adding to my mental well-being too. I had a moment this Friday where I looked around and realized I was surrounded by people I really liked. (Of course I’d had a few drinks, so even people I don’t like all that much were seeming more like people I at least sort of liked.) It was just such a cool feeling, hanging out with a bunch of friendly familiar faces, talking about things with people who either share your point of view or will argue vehemently against it and maybe change your mind. I caught a fleeting glimmer of why other people like to socialize. Because for just that moment the world felt like a warm, friendly place. For a few hours I lost that persistent feeling that life is perpetually gearing up to clock me in the face. I relaxed.

I wonder if the world feels like a friendly place to other people all of the time, or at least most of the time? And if it does, I wonder if they know how lucky they are?

I also made more of an effort to pay attention to what was going on around me, but it was really hard. When MyTodd™ and I went out on Monday there were four separate occasions in which he had to point out to me that someone was either trying to say hello, goodbye or converse with me. Which is why, as he explained, people sometimes think I am an asshole. (Which, yeah I am an asshole, but not the kind who purposely ignores you if you’re trying to talk to me. Seriously, I didn’t see you there.) And on Friday someone came up to me and waved at me for 15 seconds, directly six inches from my face before I figured out they were trying to get my attention. Anyway, we’re going to call that “extreme internal focus” and not “criminally absentminded cluelessness” because we’re trying to be nice to me, OK?

Of course it’s never me going out unless I end up having some type of Ludicrous Interpersonal Exchange with someone, and this week’s exchange actually came from a guy that I know, rather than a random weirdo stranger.  (Sorry weirdo stranger guy at the bar who was eyeballing me and seemed to be vying for this week’s most ludicrous exchange, my friends helpfully created a physical barrier between us for most of the evening, and I made sure that I was never alone so you couldn’t get weird with me.)

Anyway, when I walked in I was greeting everyone. That’s a standard social convention to which I subscribe. But of course there’s always that thing when you’re greeting a bunch of people where you know you’re in the friendship stage at which you hug some of them hello and then you end up hugging like two-thirds of the group, but then there’s a few people who you don’t know well enough to hug, and they’re standing there all unhugged-akimbo and it’s awkward. And you try to fuss with your purse or order a drink to cover up how you’re not hugging them, and then it’s all over and the awkwardness is done for another week. Or until it’s time to leave.

Well there was one guy there who I know well enough to have just started hugging hello the last few times I’ve seen him. So I had greeted everyone else and I was going to be sitting next to him, so I was all “Hello <<Name>>!” and I hugged him. And I may have done a little air-kiss thing next to his cheek, too. When we were done embracing he asked me “Are we ‘kiss on the cheek’ friends now?” Which to me is a step up from hugging friends, but I didn’t want to be an awkward asshole, so was like “Of course!” and he said something like “Are you sure?” and I said. “Sweetie, whatever you want! You want a little tongue in the ear action, you can have that too.”

OK so obvious disclaimer here, that was a joke.That wasn’t even a particularly flirty joke, it was kind of a ridiculous joke.

Then somehow as I am fussing with my purse and ordered a drink he segues into “OK it’s decided then, we’re going to kiss on the lips now!” Seriously! And then he kisses me on the lips! And I was all ‘WTF just happened right here?’ in my head, but trying to play it off like he hadn’t just swiped half my lip gloss. So I just laughed and wished a lot that I could sit somewhere else. Luckily right that second he got a call that he had to go pick someone up, and took off. OK, that was weird.

So later in the evening my friend Dave showed up. Now, Dave is a most excellent friend because he’s extremely even-tempered, and he finds pretty much everything ridiculous. So you can totally point out ridiculous things and people to him all night long, and he gets the humor of it, but he just accepts everything with a nice calm way of being. Todd says it’s because Dave’s already seen every freaky thing in the world and there’s nothing left for him to get excited over, but I think it’s also part of his nature. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the perfect foil for my own sense of the ridiculous + tendency to freak out a little. His calm enhances my calm, and I like it. So Dave ended up sitting next to me at some point in the evening, just when I saw this other guy show back up.

Knowing he’d appreciate the bizarre contractual aspect of those kissing negotiations, I started telling him the story. “OMG, when <<name>> came in earlier, I was all “hey” and then he was all “hey, now we’re going to be ‘kiss on the lips’ friends!” and I was all “!!!” and then now we’re apparently kiss on the lips friends! Isn’t that fucked up?” And Dave was laughing that that was indeed fucked up, because he knows I am barely ever hugging on people I really like, much less kissing people I don’t know well. And then as I am sitting there telling him that story, here comes the original guy, leans over Dave’s shoulder and fucking smacks one right on my lips again! And then he says to Dave “We’ve agreed that we’re going to do this from now on.” and then he looks at me and says “Right?” and I am all “Uh huh!” and Dave is laughing his ass off. And I am realizing that not only does this guy think we’re kiss on the lips friends, but we’re apparently kiss on the lips friends every time we see each other in the evening! What? I mean, what prompts that, exactly? How long do we have to be absent from each other for that to kick in? If I leave to pee, when I come back do I have to do another round of lip-kissing? What?

And before anyone says it is some kind of weird hitting on me thing, it’s not. When the guy left earlier it was to pick up his girlfriend, who was then sitting right there for the return-kissage. I think he’s just kissy or something, I don’t know.

And even if the poor man was desperate enough to want to have me in his back pocket as some kind of “break glass in case of not having your dick sucked in six months” emergency ration, and this kiss thing is supposed to be laying the groundwork for that, it’s totally going to backfire, because now I am going to have to dodge him every time I see him! Tiresome! Anyway, that was the Ludicrous Interpersonal Exchange of the evening, for your reading pleasure. Now breakfast.

• Home. Reject all notion of random house party with bad art. @sgthotpants was a total no-show unless she was there and I didn’t see her. Bed. #
• Also was informed by guy I don’t know very well that we’re now “kiss on the lips” kind of friends. Are they allowed to just decide that? #
• Eating rusk with pindakaas & chocolade hagelslag. Funny how things you don’t care for that much when you have them become delicacies later. #
• Ha! All dogs have a chewtoy. Jake just tried to bury his in the chair & go after Chelsea’s. He’s a demon. I unburied it. I am onto his game. #
• Almost at 3k words for today, want to do at least 4k, then I will be officially ahead for the first time since Day1. Good day for cocooning. #

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• Dear guy on my street hammering on his car engine at 11 p.m.Did you ever think that noise at this house might annoy people who have jobs? #
• Whoops, I meant this *hour.* What can I say, I am sleepy. Also, who stole the delete? #
• NaNo update - 2,039 words for today puts me at 20,560 overall. Respectable. Now I can go to bed without feeling guilty. #
• Day off, watching Daily Show and Colbert from last night. O’Reilly is Palinesque in his level of assholish sneering and fact realignment. #
• Worst headline today = “Fire Rips Through Tony Montecito, Home To Oprah, Rob Lowe And Others” Took me more than 3 tries to understand. #
• Hint: “Tony Montecito” is not a guy. #
• ♪♫ Listening to “Night Ride Across the Caucasus” by Loreena McKennitt on @Favtape http://tinyurl.com/6htu3u #
• Had shower and now getting ready for a trip out to Global Foods. In the mood for rijsttafel. #
• http://twitpic.com/lr9m - Do you think it will make him appear, kinda like a butler? #
• Got latest blood work bill. Lab charged $214.60. Insurance paid them $12. Of course if I had no insurance, I’d be paying $214.60 not $12. #
• Our health care system defies all logic and reason, not to mention many ethical principles I can think of. #
• http://twurl.nl/vwg7so Peter Schiff is scaring the crap out of me, both for his past prescience and his sense-making now. Hunker down peeps. #
• Just passed the 1000-word mark for today. I am trying to write something that’s not profoundly emotionally disturbing, and it’s choking me. #
• Leaving. Could do without this rain, seriously. #

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The economic disaster we’re in the middle of - this guy predicted it all before it happened, and people laughed. He predicted what would happen, how it would happen and why it was going to happen, and people didn’t listen. In his most recent posting at the Motley Fool, he says a lot of things that make perfect sense to me. Most sensible of all is the commentary about the credit crisis.

Look, I am the furthest thing from an economist, but to me what’s happening in the credit market needs to happen. Very few people are saying that. There’s all this bailing out, and trying to keep things running, when actually things really need to change. Things need to fail if they’re badly built, not be propped up on some kind of crazy scaffold made of toothpicks and the taxes we hope will be paid by our grandchildren. (Read the entire piece at the link below. Bolding mine.)

Peter Schiff: The Humpty Dumpty Economy
We Shopped and Dropped

This week, the bankruptcy filing by Circuit City and a profit warning from Best Buy, served as proof positive that America’s national shopping spree is over. As I have long said, the business model of importing cheap goods for Americans to buy with credit cards was unsustainable. We were told to “Shop till we dropped,” and we did.

Americans two primary sources of spending money, home equity extractions and unlimited credit card availability, have been shut down. With only dwindling paychecks to rely on, Americans are justifiably economizing. As a result, many more retailers will file for bankruptcy over the next few years, and those that remain solvent will only do so by drastically cutting their capacity.

In a desperate move to arrest this necessary process, Treasury Secretary Paulson announced his intention to use part of the $700 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program) funds to re-liquefy consumer lending.

Paulson observed that “illiquidity is raising the cost and reducing the availability of car loans, student loans, and credit cards”, “creating a heavy burden on the American people” and reducing jobs. While all of this is true, this is precisely what needs to happen. Americans need to reduce their spending on all of these things, and market forces are in the process of bringing that change about. By encouraging even more borrowing, Paulson’s plan will aggravate the crisis.

Along those lines, our nation’s various bank regulators issued a joint press release this week that “encouraged” banks to make more loans and to reduce their lending standards if need be. Since lax lending standards are one of the primary reasons that those banks “needed” to be bailed out in the first place, it is lunacy to now encourage them throw good money after bad. More risky lending (and currently nearly all lending is risky) interferes with the market’s attempts to rebalance our economy along the lines that Paulson himself admits is necessary, and sows the seeds for even bigger bailouts in the future when this new crop of loans go bad.

Coming from someone who doesn’t carry credit card debt at all and has paid off her students loans, it may be easy to say that there should be a tightening in those credit markets. But hell, you think I don’t want a new car? You think I wouldn’t like to get a Home Depot credit card and replace my faulty appliances? I am putting off things that aren’t emergencies because I can’t afford them, and that’s how it’s supposed to work. Making it easy for us to borrow money again will just let the average person go right back to the “buy now, pay forever” model that they’ve been running for the past twenty years. If there’s one thing that gas prices have taught us it’s that we only care about solving problems when there’s a crisis. Once it’s not hitting us directly the impetus to solve the problem permanently goes away. Sorry, but America needs to feel the credit crunch - not just have it bandaged over with play money that Paulson looted from our great-great grandchildren.

It all makes me want to start stocking up on bottled water and dry rations. I don’t think it’s going to look any better a year from now - I hope like hell I have a job and I hope that my salary will still be enough to pay my mortgage plus the cost of basics like food and heating. But I am really, really worried about that.

• Holy effing crap! What people won’t come up with to sell. Seriously. http://tinyurl.com/5ueb7g #
• Anyone else keep doing a double-take when they see the names “Danzig” and “Rollins” in articles about the new administration? #
• http://twurl.nl/zfltq1 One step up (or down?) from the past 8 yrs of aggressive ignorance is the coming 4-8 of intellectual violence. #
• Need opinions on appropriateness of posting a “Wipe off the seat after you pee all over it, you damn dirty bitches.” sign in bathroom. #
• GRR. All the connections from our Mac to the network say they’re no longer valid. All the shortcuts say they’re bad aliases or something. #
• Of course our IS people don’t even want to hear about it, since Macs make them break out in hives. I want to throw that thing in the street. #
• In further news of how we like to keep it classy here, no one even sent an email to inform us that the database guy quit last week. #
• Dear Colleague: How do you think we could have pictures of things that don’t exist yet? We’re Marketing, not magicians. #
• Today is my Friday, and there’s only 48 minutes left of it! #
• Mmmm, home from work, errands run, off tomorrow and new Paste magazine music sampler to download. Life is sweet. #
• So excited for email promising Weepies tour dates. Go to link. Tour dates!=One show in L.A.. Gee, thanks for nothing. #
• I don’t feel like writing anything today. I don’t know what I feel like doing. Sitting and starting at the wall, maybe. #

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So not much to say, or time to say it. I took these pictures of Jakester tonight. As a result of my spoiling him he’s become uber-clingy and wants to be held all the time. Or stuck in my sports bra to kind of lounge across my chest in the mornings. Anyway, they’re blurry and badly lit and I really like them anyway.