Monday, July 31, 2006

The story of squash

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who had a hard time making poopies. After his mama and daddy decided that suppositories were absolutely no fun, they decided to feed him squash instead. As it turned out, squash was his first big-people food ever. At first he thought he might like it.

But then after he got a taste, he changed his mind! Squash is yucky!


Then, the little boy decided he would rather eat his bib. Besides, if he had his mouth stuffed full of bib, how could his mommy get any suash in?


But his mama, she was pretty smart and she got the squah in anyways. It was still yucky.


After a few bites, though, the little boy came around. He decided squash wasn't so bad!

Friday, July 28, 2006

I'm just saying...

On the reasonably good chance that the News-Review chooses not to print the letter to the editor I wrote them this morning, I am going to post it here too. I will be heard, damn it!

Dear Editor,

I am writing to express my absolute disgust at what I saw while driving to work in Petoskey this morning. A group of anti-abortion activists was lining both sides of US-31; young people stood on either side of the road holding up massive signs depicting the bloodied corpses of dead babies. Believe me, for those of you who were fortunate enough not to see this atrocity, it looked far worse than it sounds.

Abortion politics aside, I must express my horror and condemnation at these protestors’ tactics. I ask you, would it be acceptable for people who protest the death penalty to hold similar signs depicting the burnt and mangled corpses of those who have been executed in the electric chair? I think not.

No matter what side of the debate you favor, I am hard pressed to understand any logical argument why children who happen to be passing on the street should have to see these horrific, scary images. Such images in a film would get it an “R” rating, and yet for some reason it is okay for them to be shown on the street.

Indeed, these individuals have a right to free speech guaranteed under the First Amendment, a fact that I would not change even under these circumstances. However, with that right comes the responsibility to respect others, an obligation that these protestors seem to have missed.

There are far better ways to make a point. Seeing those signs this morning did absolutely nothing to change my stance on abortion. It simply made me disgusted by those individuals who were there this morning to voice their opposition to it. I cannot imagine listening to the opinions of such obviously demented individuals.

Sincerely,
Me

Clearly I am in the mood to be righteously indignant today. I am personally offended at the drop of a hat. Among the other things that have truly pissed me off is a document entitled “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” written by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an office of the Roman curia (the governing bureaucracy of the Catholic Church). This 2003 document puts forth the official church standpoint on gay marriage, including the following points:
- homosexual activity is intrinsically unnatural and immoral
- Marriage was instituted by God between sexually complementary persons who are able to procreate (ha! Notice it doesn’t say HOW MANY! Hehehehehe)
- Gay marriage would undermine the traditional concept of marriage, thereby causing great damage to society
- It is the duty of Catholic politicians to openly oppose and combat gay marriage.

Luckily this document was presented within the Catholic Church edition of the Opposing Viewpoints book series. I highly recommend this series. It provides both sides of a wide variety of issues under certain topics. Thankfully, I was saved from spontaneously combusting in a rage of fury, by the counterpoint, written by Matthew Fox (as far as I know, this is not the same Matthew Fox from Lost and Party of Five and is, thus, credible). Fox’s points are as follows:
- The church has a history of being somewhat behind the curve when it comes to dealing with the disconnect between faith teachings and scientific fact. Just Galileo, who was just recently (in 1992) pardon by the church a mere 359 years after he was condemned by daring to suggest that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the solar system.
- Homosexuality IS natural. Approximately 10% of any human population is homosexual and there are at least 64 known animal species with homosexual populations including (gasp!) dolphins. (Had the religious right known this all those years ago, perhaps we could have been spared the antics of Flipper…)
- “A church that wants to teach love ought to be encouraging monogamous and established relationships of love instead of forcing gay people into self-hated and sometimes into practices of promiscuity that separate love from sexual expression.”
- Gays do, indeed, serve the common good. For example, a gay artist named Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti (you may know him simply as Michelangelo) painted a pretty awesome ceiling in a chapel in Rome. Perhaps you have heard of the Sistine Chapel? It only took him 4 years to finish. Not bad, eh? Other famous gays who contributed to the greater good? Socrates, Plato, Virgil, Leonardo DaVinci, Sir Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Caravaggio, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Ma Rainey, Cole Porter, Margaret Mead, Marlene Dietrich, Langston Hughes, Greta Garbo, Tennessee Williams, Leonard Bernstein, Michel Foucault, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and Audre Lorde among countless others.

Now...nobody better cut me off on the way home...

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Death, birds, Ativan and nail polish...

Well…I have to tell you that I am not the same person I used to be. There is something new and different about me. I have changed. On Monday I had oral surgery to remove a tooth that was damaged by a quack-ass dentist in Lansing over 5 years ago. Long story short: he messed up, my tooth got infected and it had to be pulled. Now I am a hick northerner because I have a gap where there should be a tooth and there isn’t. My dentist says the area has to completely heal before they can move on to phase two: an implant. Ha! I’m getting an implant…not a silicone death-bag, though. A tooth.

Anyway, that’s not really what makes me different. I mean, sure, I feel like white trash what with one of my teeth missing and all (at least it’s in the back where you can’t see it!) but there’s more to my story. I now have dead-person tissue residing in my body. That’s right – I had to have a bone graft of cadaver bone. Crazy, eh? I’m thinking that from now on I can blame the dead person’s tissue for wanting to eat all the junk food. It’s a great alibi. “It isn’t my fault…the cadaver part of my mouth really WANTED an ice cream cone. I can’t control it. It’s like that pseudo-horror movie Idol Hands…at least I think…I’ve never actually seen that movie.” I suppose I am just another person out there, living proof of how important it is to donate your organs…where would I be without my dead person’s bone in my jaw, I ask you? I don’t bet many people think of that when they decide to donate their organs. And do you know how much it cost? Over $600! I bet the dead person didn’t see a dime of that money. What a cash cow!

In other death-related news, last Thursday I drove down to TC so Sam and I could go to the Junior Royale Parade at the Cherry Festival. On the way down I hit two birds at one time with my car. Apparently they were too busy doing that whole mating/flirting in mid-air kind of wild and crazy flying when their ecstasy was suddenly interrupted by the grill of my car. Luckily, it didn’t leave a mark. I think that might be a quintessential example of Darwinism at work. Stupid birds who get hit by a car while making sweet love obviously should not pass on their genes to future generations.

This reminds me of one winter several years ago when I was finishing my degree. I was driving home one weekend when some big blackish brownish flying something went WHAM right into the front of my car. I didn’t think much of it…debris or maybe a bird or something. Then I got home to find a massive hole in the grill of the car. Massive as in about 10” across. I showed Owen who wasn’t happy but, hey, this is Northern Michigan…it happens. A couple of days later, when he was looking at it, he noticed that the dead thing was still in there! (It was winter…couldn’t smell rotting flesh what with it being fricking freezing.) He pulled it out and can you guess what it was? An owl…who kills an owl in a hit-and-run? I mean, really…

Back to the topic of my tooth…I would like to recommend that everybody who is going in for an extraction should ask for 4 mg of Ativan ahead of time. Let me just say that I do not remember much of Monday at all. In fact, yesterday I noticed that my thumb nail was painted and I had no recollection of painting it. Apparently, Owen wasn’t watching me very closely and I painted it at the drug store while waiting for my prescription to be filled. I guess I told him that it was okay, and that they wouldn’t mind. I’m a little bummed, though, because as it turns out, I like the color a lot and I have no idea where/how to find it again.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

F.Y.I For You

So...this is what I do at work. Since I started here two years ago, many of you have asked me, "Sarah, what is it that you do at work all day?" Well, here is your answer. It's not the WHOLE list of EVERYTHING...but it's mostly everything.

Daily bank deposit
Bill and petty cash reconciliations
Write and distribute two newsletters
Supply inventory/orders
Coordinate the attorney rotation (for legal advice)
Arrange for pickup of donated furniture
Perform light maintenance (such as repairing vacuum cleaner, replacing light bulbs, etc.)
Schedule maintenance/repairs of facilities and equipment
Update building inspection list and acquire documentation of inspections of all offices/properties
OSHA record-keeping (updating posters, MSDS books, etc)
Troubleshoot/repair technology for all offices
Train staff in use of technology
Make technology-related recommendations
Coordinate long-term technology projects (such as file management, database creation, etc.)
Take photos for the archives
Create press-releases, classified ads and display ads
Design of posters, flyers, handouts, etc.
Track Specific Assistance
Pay bills (occasionally)
Process credit card charges
Make hotel reservations and request applicable payments for workshops, conferences, etc.
Assist in maintaining procedural manuals and job description updates
Maintain organization of storage spaces such as supply cupboards, closets, basement and shed.
Attend meetings for and assist in coordinating/planning fund-raising event planning (Side Door, WWT, WC/WD, etc.)
Arrange for work-release volunteers
Anything else nobody is sure whose responsibility something is and for which nobody volunteers on their own