A Short Blast of Fury for The Today Show

God.
Just... ugh.
I watch the Today Show every morning, every damned morning for about as long as I can remember. And it has at least one segment every morning that makes me slap my forehead. I'm used to it.
But this morning, they have this fucking ridiculous segment about re-naming things associated with women so that they can be for men- "murse," "mewelry," etc.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
God forbid men wear something that's for women, like a purse or jewelry. That would make them effeminate, and that would mean they're gay. Because, you know, the worst thing you could ever do is emulate female behavior. Everybody knows that women are weak.
What the fuck is wrong with people? Why the fuck would any woman, in her right mind, agree to do that segment? Why would anyone acknowledge that dumb waste of time? A murse? A man-purse? Since, you know, purses are for women. Oh, fuck you. Fuck you all. Fuck anyone who thinks this should be a thing. Taking something that is associated with women and changing the language "so it can be for men" makes me actually want to strangle someone. I'm really fucking glad that we're almost one hundred years from when women got the vote, but we are still changing our language so big, strong men don't have to be using the same things as dirty, dirty women.
A bunch of mouches. You know, man-douches.

Primaries Make Me Believe the End is Near

Well, there is another presidential debate on the tube, and all I have to say about that is Jay-sus Christ (would not be amused).
I mean, seriously. I know this is on Fox News, so my standards should be appropriately lowered, but come on. This is stupid. This has reached a point of blatant, proud ignorance that I cannot even fathom. I would need to drink Drano to get to this level.
It's shocking, really, that we have an entire faction of people in this country who buy into this crap. Really? You think we should lower taxes? What kind of fucking economics class did you take, candidates? I missed the part where cutting taxes to nothing does something positive for the system. Guess what- taxes pay for things. They don't just pay for grandma's healthcare, they also pay for such abominations as roads, schools, national parks, state parks, mass transit, universities, libraries, and regulatory services that keep us good and dandy like the Food and Drug Administration or the Internal Revenue Service (yes, the IRS is a good thing). This is insane. This isn't even capitalism. (This is not Sparta, either.)
Let's talk about capitalism. You see, capitalism isn't "evil." It isn't "good," either. It's a system that looks one way on paper and another way when you add humans. Capitalism, at its core, is a system motivated by companies and economics. Is that a negative? I don't think so. Ideally, a company cares first about its customers, second about its employees, and third about its profits. Why? Because it works. See, when you care about your customers, they buy your products. When they buy your products, you have the wealth to take care of your employees. When you take care of your employees, they have the opportunity to be customers somewhere else, where they spend money and, indirectly, pay money towards the incomes of people who will be your customers. When you disregard your employees and don't take care of them, they cannot afford to spend money. If they can't do that, other people cannot earn money. If there's no surplus money in peoples' pockets, they don't spend it at your company.
This model makes sense to me. It seems to be capitalism, in that we have a constant exchange of money- a back-and-forth flow of wealth, if you will. However, this is not the model we currently use.
What we have is not capitalism. It's a kind of "corporate socialism," in that when companies fail to care for their employees and customers, those companies' leaders are assured economic survival by the government. Even in the cases of companies not directly given money to stay afloat, they still benefit from laws (or lack thereof) that address "golden parachutes" and legal liability for the failure of a company. As long as this system persists, these corporations have no real motivation to care about the welfare of their employees and the rights of their customers.
But I digress. I'm not an economics person by training, and perhaps I'm being a bit of an idealist. All I mean by this is that these candidates are incorrect when they claim to support capitalism. What they support is not capitalism, because it is an unsustainable system to promote the wealth of the few and ignore the welfare of the many. What they support is a system in which the government supports corporations and their leaders without regard to the customers and employees those corporations have scorned. That is more socialist than anything Barack Obama has done, but it isn't in the interests of the citizens. This is why I call it corporate socialism, and I am terrified of it.

In Memoriam

Well, it has been a bit since I last posted. I've started my next semester of school, and it did not start out the way one would have hoped.
I study anthropology (the biological side, not so much the cultural side), and in particular I like osteology and forensic anthropology. The person who inspired this passion, Dr. Karen Ramey Burns, passed away quite unexpectedly last weekend, two days before I was to take forensic anthropology from her. To say it was a shock would be an understatement of astronomical proportions- here was the woman who inspired the focus of my studies, suddenly taken from the world far too soon.
The head of the anthropology department himself informed us of this tragedy, and for that I am grateful. It was a far kinder way to deliver such horrible news than, say, a mass email. Given this, though, it was still an awful day for me and for everyone else who had known her or been inspired by her.
She helped to launch forensic anthropology to its current position in the scientific world, proving its importance by helping to identify victims of genocide, natural disasters, and acts of terrorism. She was one of the leaders in the attempt to uncover Amelia Earhart's fate. She identified remains after the attacks on the World Trade Center and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Dr. Burns helped to found an NGO in Colombia with the purpose of assisting families of victims in Colombia's current guerrilla war. She worked in Bosnia, Haiti, and Guatemala, to name a few.
Dr. Burns didn't do any of this to become famous; a person in this kind of field never does. She did what she did because she cared about people, both the dead and the living they left behind. It takes a strong person to be able to deal with these kinds of remains, and Dr. Burns was one of the strongest individuals I have ever encountered.
I only regret that I only had a year of her time. I sincerely wish I could have had the opportunity to know her better. In such a small amount of time, I was so inspired by everything she had to say. It entirely altered my view of the world, and my view of the dead. Her attitude towards physical anthropology changed my mind about what I wanted to do with my life. I have always had it in my mind that I want to help people, but Karen Ramey Burns made me want to help people who no longer had a way to help themselves. Her attitude made me want to help bring some closure to the families of those people.
Beyond that, Dr. Burns inspired me because her life flew in the face of the attitude that a woman can have a career or a family, but not both. I was already raised by a woman who disproved that theory, and I've never bought into that kind of bullshit thinking. Here was a woman who had managed an impressive career in a difficult field while raising a family. It inspired me further, with the idea that a woman could have a family while traveling the world to do work she believed in wholeheartedly.
To lose such a person is awful. Putting aside my own admiration for her, I thought of her children, and grandchildren. I thought of all the families she helped, all the students she taught, all the people she inspired. It breaks my heart to think of how fortunate I was to get to spend any time with such an inspiring mentor, and how much so many other people will be missing from their own lives because they never had the opportunity I had.
I imagine that such a glowing memorial of a person I hardly knew seems silly. Maybe I seem obsessed. I'm alright with that, because I know that these are genuine sentiments. When I entered school at University of Utah, I didn't know what I want to do. Dr. Burns changed my life, and now I know what I want to do. I've met plenty of people in the past that I respected and admired, but few that have truly changed my outlook on life. The world has lost one of the greatest people to ever grace its surface.

Privacy and Piracy

Privacy is an interesting thing.
If you've ever wondered just how exposed you truly are, go ahead and Google your own name sometime. It's remarkably disturbing, the things that pop up. I guess, since I have two different social networking accounts and a blog, I should be used to it.
So, if I'm all over the Internet (not really, but for argument's sake), then how much of my information actually belongs to me? The art I post on Facebook, the words I write here, do those still belong to me? Are they mine, and mine alone, or do they now belong to the world?
The same question applies to any other form of media. If an artist releases a video on, say, YouTube, does it really still belong to that artist? Does a song still belong to the musician after it's bought and paid for online? Or is it public property, free to be distributed at the leisure of the users?
I cannot help but feel that the Internet has caused art to head towards the latter, rather than the former. But is that really such a bad thing? If a person cannot share your art with others, in any way, does that promote your name? What benefit do you have from keeping your work bottled? While royalties might produce some income, I feel it's safe to say actual performances and appearances are more profitable. If notoriety increases your worth, isn't it more beneficial for you to gain popularity in any way possible?
People who share music do not claim to have created the song, nor do they claim to be the artist. That is where I feel a line should be drawn- I'm not opposed to the sharing of art and media, but I am opposed to plagiarism. If I saw my writing on another site, I would be flattered- until someone claims those words as his or her own.
But how does anyone enforce something like this, except on a case-by-case basis? There is no foolproof way to verify the creator of something, unless their rights to the creation are enforced absolutely. This, however, is an impossible feat- the Internet is far too large for an entity to monitor everything equally.
I suppose this is the motivation for Congress's latest, sad attempt to do such policing. In this proposed piece of legislature, the users would become the police, reporting websites they personally deem in violation of vague copyright laws. This bill, however, gives law enforcers the ability to shut down access to reported websites without the due process that has served as a cornerstone of our judicial system.
The bill is so poorly-written, so vague, that it can only serve to harm the free flow of information over the Internet. Giving a government agency permission to condemn any reported website so blatantly violates freedom of speech.
I guess the question here is whether access to the Internet is a right or not. On the one hand, it is a channel for people to express themselves. On the other, however, there is no such thing as free Internet- we are required to pay some company in order to gain access. Is it our right to make ourselves more vulnerable, to give away information about ourselves, or is it a privilege to do so? If being on the Internet means that we give up certain parts of ourselves, would information such as music and art not also fall under this truth? Don't artists give up their right to absolute control when they choose to be a part of the Internet?
These are questions that are not about to be answered on my blog, or any blog. It is entirely possible that there are no answers, that the best we can do is come to an agreement on how to handle the Internet. However, the current approach is outdated and dangerous; we cannot use arcane methods to deal with such a modern problem. We need a modern solution.

Thoughts on the 99%

After a man died at the Occupy Salt Lake City camp (a mixture of carbon monoxide poisoning and drug overdose is the current theory), our mayor ordered the camp closed. They arrested about twenty people, and they used a bulldozer to take down the tents.

A bulldozer. To take down a few tents. A piece of equipment that probably costs thousands and thousands of dollars to insure and maintain, and they used it on some Coleman tents and cardboard lean-tos. They wasted thousands of dollars, taxpayer dollars, to make a show of force.

In other places, the police have arrested and/or beaten everyone from Iraq war vets to retired state Supreme Court justices. They took the press badges from any reporters trying to cover the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. This is in the same country that's made a point of claiming we have "freedom of the press."

What, exactly, is the motivation for these police officers, these supposed upholders of the law, to so blatantly disobey the most significant document in our country? Do they not realize that their pensions were most likely tied up in a stock market that bottomed out because of this "1%" they are now supporting with their actions? Do they not acknowledge that they are a part of this majority being forced to shoulder the burden of debt that others have manufactured? They so easily strike down people my age, and people my parents' age, and people your age. For what? Because they were told to do so? Have they never read the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials?

Now, I would never go so far as to equate police to Nazis. They are nowhere near the same. This aside, the justification of "being told to do so" has been used time and again as an excuse to commit any number of atrocities.

Of course, a person cannot simply be told to support a movement, even when confronted with any number of facts. No, people will only begin to agree with the Occupy movement when they have made an emotional connection to it.

My connection is simple enough to understand- I was raised by the public education system with the impression that if I worked hard and went to college, life would be set. Now that I'm a year and a half from graduation and thousands of dollars in the hole with student loans, however, prospects seem grim. I worked hard, I paid my damned taxes last year, and yet I'm being asked to not only pay an exorbitant amount of money for my education, but I am also facing the prospect of having social programs I rely on slashed, simply because the richest people in this country do not feel like paying taxes.

Where is the justice in that? More so, where is the democracy? We live in a country with the second-lowest socio-economic mobility of all developed nations on the planet. My being not-rich is not a fault of my own, except that I was born into the wrong family. Because, as much as Herman Cain might protest otherwise, the biggest determining factor in your wealth as an adult is the economic class of your parents. While there certainly are exceptions to this, exceptions do not set the standard.

No, I was raised with the idea that when you earned more money than most people, it was your responsibility to contribute that good fortune back into society. I worked in soup kitchens, I donate money, I volunteer. It is not driven by some moral standard; it is driven by the knowledge that a society heavily-reliant upon its people cannot be successful unless everyone contributes as much as possible. If these rich people are "job creators," where exactly are all the jobs? What have they pumped back into their community?

Being a country run by its own people, for its own people, is a serious responsibility. With the acceptance of being a member of this country, you acknowledge that we need people, of all kinds. If you are unwilling to contribute, get out of this country. When the society as a whole is healthy and provided for, it is more efficient. Jobs do not magically arise out of the ether; rather, they come from necessity. When more people spend money within the system, demand rises. The people most likely to spend a large sum of money in their community are not that mysterious one percent. A person who earns fifty thousand dollars is far more likely to spend almost all of that than a person who earns several million.

Why, then, are people who are statistically part of this "99%" willing to support the other one? Perhaps because the one percent has worked hard to create in the minds of Americans the idea that you, too, can become a part of their exclusive club, as long as you support them. Evidence, of course, would suggest otherwise.

I suppose that what we have here is a massive failure to communicate. The people who believe they can aspire to be rich have been fed these fallacies by the very group they wish to join. They have come to believe the 99% movement is one of "young, self-entitled people," which is entirely untrue (as the name suggests, 99% of the population consists of more than twenty-somethings). They have been told that it is unfair to expect these wealthy people to pay taxes, because they (the wealthy) create jobs that simply are not there.

It is an entire system built on misinformation, and the vast majority of people are tired of it. These backwards stalwarts can either find a legitimate argument against the movement, or they can join it, but those who sit comfortably behind snide commentary like, "McDonald's is hiring" or "I bet they don't even pay taxes" are only destined to make idiots of themselves. They do not have to go down to the camps and join the literal occupation, but they are welcome to contact their representatives, vote against policies maintaining the status quo, and use their money to support those companies and campaigns with which they find common ground. Being a part of this movement is not about being anti-capitalist; it is about making sure that corporations remember who really pays their wages. Capitalism, much like democracy, cannot survive if it alienates the people upon which it relies. Being a part of this movement means you feel the system in which you exist has forgotten you're there. Change is real, and it can happen- look at the mega-banks changing their policies in anticipation of losing customers to credit unions. This isn't about drum circles, or tents, this is about a movement so big, so significant, that it is not restrained by physical boundaries. They have occupied Wall Street, and Los Angeles, and Boise, but they're also occupying blogs, they're occupying news sources, they're occupying Twitter and they're occupying Facebook. They're in multiple countries, they speak multiple languages, they come from different backgrounds. You can choose to be one of them, or you can choose to be surrounded by them.

My name is Meg, and I am a part of the 99%.

A Story about Depression

One of my favorite bloggers has inspired this post. Today, she posted about everyone's favorite topic- depression.

Now, let me be clear- there is a huge cavern of difference between "feeling sad" and depression. Feeling sad is motivated by some occurrence, and anyone can suffer from it. People can suffer from profound sadness over any number of things. You can be sad because a relative died, and you can be sad because a hurricane devastated a group of people.

Depression is different.

Now, I cannot begin to vouch for anyone else's feelings, but I feel I'm pretty good at telling the difference between when I'm feeling sad and when I am suffering from genuine depression.

I was sad when my grandfather died last spring. I was depressed while living in Portland.

And I don't need to go into the minutiae of what my experience was like while being depressed, except that it was all-encompassing and overwhelming. I felt like I could not get out of bed, and what was worse, that no one cared whether I got out of bed or not.

And it builds on itself. I stopped going to class, I stopped doing homework, I made excuses for not socializing with my friends. I put off life itself because it was simply too much for me. I blew off my life, and shit built up until I felt like there was no way I could wade back into the thick of it. There were too many essays, too much homework, too great of a burden.

Everything just turned into one ugly, painful spiral, and I hated myself for it. I didn't understand how other people managed it so easily, when getting out of bed was an accomplishment for me. I cried in the shower, I cried myself to sleep, I cried walking back to my dorm after the few classes I did manage to attend.

I'm not going to try to illustrate that kind of self-loathing that I (and my guess is others) felt while in this great little shit-hole, the kind where you look in the mirror and hate everything you see, and everything you represent. If you've felt it, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you're lucky, and you're not about to gain any understanding from a silly little blog like mine.

Depression is like addiction- no one can tell you you've got a problem. No one can tell you to get better. You have to be willing to get help, and to help yourself. And that's how it ended- I helped myself. I started by forcing myself out of bed, forcing myself to work on homework, study for tests, go buy groceries. I put myself in that hole, and I dug myself back out of it. On a scale of the most painful experiences I have had, this was by far the worst, but I survived. In fact, I more than survived- I got myself out of Portland, transferred to a school I love, found a degree I love, and moved as far away from that place, mentally, as I could. I'm not making light of it; getting through that year was an enormous show of will power.

And that is not how I would advocate doing it. Regardless of my personal thoughts towards psychology, nothing is more useful when you're in a hole than a good therapist. I know that having a therapist is sometimes regarded as a personal failing, but get over it. If you need help, you need help. In my case, I forced myself back onto a track that worked for me, but that's not the way to do it for other people. Just as every individual's problems are unique, the solutions also vary.

The aforementioned blogger's turning point came when she realized she had no more effort left to give to being depressed. My own turning point came when, after talking about how awful living in Portland was making me feel with a friend, he replied that I didn't have to live there. He told me there was no reason for me to stay. A shocker, I know, but in my private spiral, it never occurred to me that I could leave.

So, I did leave. I got better. And I realized that I'd learned more about myself in that one year of hell than I had over the last 18 years. I found out that I don't need validation from other people, so long as what I'm doing is important to me. I found out that I will always have the ability to change something that's got me doubting myself. Most importantly, I found out that I'm a hell of a lot tougher, and more capable, than I ever thought I was. While I was stuck in that dark nonsense, I couldn't see my life possibly getting better. Now, on the other side of it all, I can see that nothing bad ever stays bad, but it will only change if it is forced to change. Even though that was possibly the worst year of my life, I would never go back and change any part of it.

I am me because of it.

Thanks for the Concern, Rick, but No.

I watch CNN frequently- not so much for the news, but for the entertainment factor. If I want news, I go somewhere that hires real journalists, like Reuters or the BBC.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer, that king of the clueless, asked Rick Santorum (hehe, santorum) about abortion. Because, you know, white men still haven't come to a consensus on whether or not women should be in charge of their own bodies.

Anyway, dear Mr. Ricky claims that abortion is wrong because a fetus is a person. Fetuses can feel pain, after all. Women who get pregnant have to face the consequences of their actions.

Thanks for that, man. I'm glad that because you have a penis, you know better than I do. In fact, will you do my taxes for me, too? My feeble lady-mind just can't get that far. While we're at it, could you do my homework? I'm just worried that my overly-emotional brain will explode.

Let's go through some of those common arguments, starting with the one that some states want to incorporate into law.

"Fetuses feel pain." Well, yes. Sure. I suppose that, on a quantifiable level, it sends the same chemical signals that science has come to associate with pain. You know what else does that? Plants. Studies have shown that plants feel pain. Does that mean I never have to eat Brussels sprouts, either? You know, since we're never going to ever do anything that causes anything to feel "pain." While we're at it, let's add meat and fish to that list, since those things all feel pain, too. Oh, and don't forget- parasites can probably feel pain, too. So don't you dare try to kill those lice on your kid's head. They're living things, too. They feel.

"A fetus is a person." No, it's a group of cells. It relies on the mother in order to live. You what else exhibits that behavior? Tumors. A fetus isn't a person till it comes out of the womb (And not the stomach, Rick. Jesus fucking Christ.). Once it's out, it's a baby. Until it comes out, it's a fetus. Sort of like the whole lava-magma thing.

"Women need to face the consequences of their actions." Oh, that's creative. It's her womb, therefore, her problem. Furthermore, I love that we're considering children to be "consequences." I'm sure that hasn't created any sociopaths.

Let's talk about facing the consequences of one's actions. I assume that, since we're considering pregnancy to be a consequence, and are therefore condemning abortion, we're going to apply this to every kind of consequence for one's actions. This means, obviously, that doctors are now forbidden from setting broken limbs- falling on your arm while skiing was your choice, and could have been prevented, but you went with it anyway. Now you've got to either heal on your own, or die of blood poisoning. Also to be considered "consequences" are communicable diseases, natural disasters, and accidents of all kinds. After all, you chose to get hit by a car. It's not our problem.

Hopefully, this all sounds insane, and not your idea of a utopia. If it does, get away from me. But if you see how ridiculous any of these are, then you ought to see how absurd the arguments against abortion.

I love kids. I want kids of my own, someday. However, if I discovered that I was pregnant- for any reason- and I wasn't in a place where I could deal with being pregnant or raising a child, I would want the option to be there. It is unfair to everyone involved when a woman has a child she can neither raise nor emotionally support. I believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, which means the attention needs to shift off of abortion itself and onto the way we raise kids to be sexually-aware adults. I know we're all secretly twelve and talking about sex is icky, but let's be honest- kids do it with or without your guidance. So suck it up, stop trying to force laws on my goddamned uterus, and do the adult thing. Condoms and birth control are a hell of a lot cheaper than children.

Then again, maybe Rick Santorum is willing to raise all those "consequences."