I did NOT fix these results.

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant. You're up for just about anything.

Who's Your Inner European?


And, the honey is:

Your Inner European is Spanish!

Energetic and lively. You bring the party with you!

Who's Your Inner European?

And, we're in the rainy southern california weather today with internets and coffee. Huh.

Back to Work Monday. No Further Comment.

Feminism Friday

It's nice to revisit this speech once in a while. I love Joss.

See This Movie.

Girl 27 is a recent documentary about the Hollywood rape of an underage studio dancer after she and over a hundred other girls were costumed and tricked into attending an MGM sales conference in 1937.

She brought a suit against MGM in California state court, and after that was dismissed she brought another suit in US federal court. That got dismissed as well. After that, she just fell off the radar and was never heard from again.

I was unhappy with the egomaniacal director's insertion of himself in the movie, but just the fact that he got this poor woman's story TOLD makes it possible to forgive that. He spent over ten years trying to get all of the information, and tracking down people involved, including the victim herself who never spoke about it in 65 years, even to her own family.

It was incredible to hear to what lengths the movie studio went to hush the story, and about their own investigation that never cast doubt on what she told everyone had happened. They never denied it in the file they had on her, but vilified her in the press and in court. They had everyone on their massive payroll including the police, the jury, the prosecutor, the doctor that treated her, the eyewitness, her own lawyer, her mother (acting guardian) and even the rapist continued to work for them until his death 20 years later. The story just went away.

The documentary shows some contrast to that by telling some other Hollywood stories where the stars were protected forever despite general knowledge to the contrary about their secrets. There are some over-the-top uses of black and white movie depiction of violence toward women and sound bites played over and over of film screams, but some of that lent a real feeling of how things ran in Studio Hollywood in 1937.

I could not stop watching this movie. It was riveting, especially the second half when the director gets to the meat of the story: the woman telling her side of it. She was destroyed by what happened to her before and after the horrific attack at MGM's sales conference. Her family never knew why she was so broken until they read about it in Vanity Fair, and that was barely a week before she died. This story needed to be told, this woman needed vindication, and even through the director's poor handling that is what she got. May she finally rest in peace.

I love her, I fucking love her. (h.t. Feministing)

My honey fucking rocks too. He helped me center the video. Yeah yeah big deal, but I couldn't do it alone.

the bearer of bad news

Why is it that people with disabilities and their caregivers are not valued in our society? Most people with disabilities are active and productive members of their communities. Most people with disabilities refuse to be categorized by their disability, but it is the only descriptive most of them receive. When I say what I do for a living, I am almost always asked whether my clients are mentally or physically disabled. It is a hard question to answer because every person is different, and I cannot classify everyone as having exact disabilities as everyone else. It is a loaded question and people ask me because they are curious. It has been my experience that an average person on the street equates disability with every disability he has ever heard of. If I answer that I have a wide range of clients I can see confusion reign in that person's eyes. He or she wants to classify what I do in comparison with other jobs with other people with disabilities he or she has heard of. The problem is that it is not that simple.

Just as in the pool of population of those without disabilities, people are individuals. I can say that I have a client who was born with an injury to the spinal cord and so has symptoms of Cerebral Palsy. Ok, but I have three clients who were born with injuries to the spinal cord and have symptoms of Cerebral Palsy. They are so completely different that it is not even fair to compare them, except that they use adaptive equipment within their homes and communities. Ok, but I have four clients that use adaptive equipment within their homes and communities, and only two of the four have Cerebral Palsy. Do you see where I am going with this? The people I work with have jobs and families, are aged 27 - 76 and all ages in between, and they can't be classified into a box that fits into casual conversation!

So, what do we do with these individuals who already make a contribution to their communities via jobs and volunteering, and in one case providing a source of historical knowledge for an entire town by writing a book about it?

The answer has been to defund the programs that help them make their way in the world as productive citizens. As in the cases of a lot of what we consider non-disabled people, they need very little to a lot of help, depending on their system of support. I would not be where I am now, working for a living, supporting myself in an apartment, and helping others in a caregiver role if I did not have the help of my community. No one said to me as I lay in hospital dealing with my own disability, that they were withdrawing support for me because they could not afford it. In my case it was the love of friends and family that got me through and helped me recover from that round. In the case of my clients it is the withdrawal of necessary funds to provide them with caring staff to help them move ahead despite their disability.

I am a taxpayer. I vote for those who would raise my taxes to help fund programs like the one that funds my agency. There are those, however, in my community, who balk at property tax going up a few dollars, and so they decide, with their votes, to leave my clients, my staff, and myself without a way to do what we need to do.

I make very little money, and in fact I make less now than when I began working here four years ago. If I did not have insurance and a flexible schedule I would have had to find other work long ago. This year's budget cut was 4.8%, and at this rate my insurance rates will go up again, and if we have to cut staff again my caseload could increase, or disappear completely if I am the one to be let go. That would cut deeply into my flexible schedule that I need in order to do my job, and in order to accomodate my own illness.

So today I had to tell someone that she has to lose some of the precious help she receives because our agency could not absorb the cost of providing that help to her as she cares for her daughter at home. Some times my job really sucks.

the truth is out!

Shit!! Who told??? It's like...they *know* me, or something.

You Are a a Margarita Woman

You live most of your life in "Margaritaville", and everyone who knows you knows it. You can party with the best of them - and you're really up for anything! You're the type who's most likely to do body shots or enter a bikini contest. You prefer to date a man as lively as you are... he has to keep up!

What Kind of Drinking Woman Are You?

It's on!! NaNoWriMo 2007

Let's see how I do this year. I'm all caffeinated up and loaded for bear.