Happy Earth Day!

Some days I get bogged down by negativity when I think about all the crap the Earth takes. News of oil spills, protected species being hunted to extinction, rainforests being destroyed, global warming, etc. just makes me want to give up hope about the future of the planet. Even just taking a drive through the city reminds me of how much we take our natural resources for granted: trash covers the streets and clogs the storm drains. And, considering how much influence the huge oil companies have with their billions of dollars, I know there's only so much I can do to help.

But that little bit that I can, I do. On our walks, Peppy and I pick up the trash around our neighborhood and in the shopping center across from our apartment. I just carry an extra shopping bag with me and pick up the wrappers, bottles, cans, bags, and most other trash that I find (I will not touch Q-tips, dental flossers, tampons, or condoms unless I have gloves). We usually fill a regular sized shopping bag with no problem. Peppy enjoys the longer, more meandering walks, and I feel like I accomplished something. We help the environment and make the neighborhood look nicer. I know I can't get all the trash, and that there will be more tomorrow, but I can do my part by picking up what I see. That's enough for me.

Peppy loves a clean environment

My Top 5 Most Read Authors

I recently started using the site Goodreads, which is a great resource for book nerds like myself. It has tons of lists of books and authors, and it lets you indicate on your profile which books you've read or would like to read. This is going to be a great tool for me, considering that I read a ton of books and sometimes forget if I read a certain book or not. It even has the cool feature of telling you your "Most Read Authors." So, without further ado, here are my top 5 most read authors, according to Goodreads:

1. Stephen King (31 books - and at least 3 more under different pen names)

I got into Stephen King when I was younger, when I asked my mom what books she would recommend to me. Since she liked Stephen King and Dean Koontz, those are the authors that she gave me. I've loved horror literature for a long time, and Stephen King remains the ruler of the horror genre. In addition to his novels, I've also read a bunch of his short stories and two of his nonfiction books. My favorites are Carrie, Firestarter, and 'Salem's Lot.

2. Anne Rice (25 books - and at least 4 more under different pen names)

I really got into vampire literature once I discovered Anne Rice. I've read all the books in her Vampire Chronicles, all of the books about the Mayfair witches, and all the erotica written under her two pen names. I've even considered reading her Christ the Lord series, simply because I know they'll be well-written. And I'm stupid excited about her next novel: Prince Lestat.

3. Patricia Briggs (20 books)

If you asked me who my favorite author is (right now), I'd probably say Patricia Briggs. I LOVE Patricia Briggs. I have not read one of her books that I didn't like. Her Mercy Thompson series is my favorite, closely followed by the Sianim series. I'm currently reading Night Broken, the 8th Mercy Thompson book. Her books are full of fast-paced action and kick-ass female characters, and I can't get enough of them.

4. J. R. Ward (18 books)

Ward, aka Jessica Bird, writes mostly about vampires, war, and sex: not necessarily in that order. Although I like her Black Dagger Brotherhood series, I'm not real fond of her Angels series. She's a supernatural romance author who writes men as all of her main characters and woman only in supporting roles. After so many books, I'm tired of it, but I'm so invested in the characters at this point that I'll continue to the end of the series.

5. Kelley Armstrong (11 books)

I've already read two of Kelley Armstrong's series, and I really like her characters and her writing, so I'm planning on reading her other series. I started reading her books a long time ago, and I guess I was just unaware that she wrote so many more books.

So there you have it, my top 5 most read authors, as per Goodreads. Who's in your top 5?

All images from Goodreads.com.

More Stupid Things I Say to My Dog

In case you missed part one, check it out here: Stupid Things I Say to My Dog. Here's some more stupid things I say to my dog:

• "If you have to throw up, then go out in the kitchen! Don't throw up on the carpet!"

• "I lied--I don't actually have a treat for you."

• "Quit eating grass, it's going to make you throw up again."

• "If you eat my plant again, I'm going to skin you."

• "Go ahead and lick your butt. Get the taste of my face out of your mouth."

• Getting dressed: "Shoes! I know clothes excite you. But not as much as they excite your friend Gambit."

• "Slow down and chew your food. You're going to throw it up again."

• "There's nothing scarier than a chihuahua barking under a pile of blankets. Nothing."

• Me: "Are you trying to choke yourself? Quit pulling so hard." Partner: "I didn't know your dog was into auto-erotic asphyxiation."

• "Who's in my butt? Get out of there."

• Going to the pet store to get a doggie rain coat: "I know you're happy now, but you're about to hate me."

He hates his rain coat almost as much as he hates rain.

Mixed Messages

People and Woman's World magazines from February

I know these magazines are from last month, but I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the media. These two magazines were on sale next to each other at Wal Mart. One is People magazine, and it says: "Biggest Loser Scandal: Too Thin Too Fast?" The second is Woman's World: "10 Day Total-Body Makeover! Lose 25 lbs! Botox in a Cup!"

Talk about mixed messages. "Lose lots of weight! Change everything about yourself! But don't lose too much weight! Lose as much weight as possible! But only until you meet the arbitrary ideal body image!" It's pretty much impossible to meet the media standards of beauty, and I think that you can see that in just this one image.

What really kills me is the other messages on the Woman's World cover. "Bake Up Some Happiness!" "Make Stress Vanish!" So basically: "Lose tons of weight! Look perfect! But don't stress about your looks! And make lots of awesome food! But don't eat it, 'cause then you'll get fat! LOL!"

Ugh.

Make Life More Worth Living

Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Anything at all. It can be illegal, immoral, unethical, self-destructive...anything at all if it makes your life more worth living. There's only one rule to follow to make the kind of blanket permission work: Don't be mean.

-Kate Bornstein, author of Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws

What makes life "more worth living"? Brainstorming!

Celebrating Death

As you may have heard, the former leader of the hate group Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, died this morning. Phelps is infamous for picketing funerals of dead American soldiers with signs like "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

When news of his death came out, people had strong reactions. Many people, such as myself, are hopeful that his death signifies the end of the WBC's legacy of hatred. But others have been celebrating. Yes, celebrating a man's death. Now I understood when they celebrated Saddam Hussein's death, and they probably celebrated Hitler's death, too. While it's true that Phelps caused a lot of pain for a lot of families grieving their loved ones, it's also true that he was exercising his right to free speech--not slaughtering innocent people.

Fred Phelps was a hateful man who picketed at the funerals of dead soldiers, but he was a human being: a father, a grandfather. If we celebrate his death, we are no better than the hate-mongers of the Westboro Baptist Church. Have some compassion for your fellow humans, even if they would have none for you.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-fred-phelps-20140321,0,4718547.story#axzz2wX312QhQ

Settling for Unhappiness

"Why don't people do what they really want to do, Reuben?" he asked. "Why do we so often settle for what makes us devoutly unhappy! Why do we accept that happiness just isn't possible?" [...] "I don't know why I woke up every morning with the idea that I had to adjust, had to accept, had to go along with."

-Anne Rice, The Wolves of Midwinter

I do this a lot. Maybe it's because of my depression, but I have this belief that I just can't be happy. I don't try to make changes in my life regarding things that make me unhappy, since I don't think it will make a difference anyway. My depression tells me a lot of nasty things, and this is probably one of them. That's why this part of the novel really jumped out at me. Why do I just accept what makes me unhappy? I have to learn to not listen to my depression when it tells me things like this, but I have to learn to identify the voice of my depression first. Maybe then I can work at being a happier person.

How Easy It Is

I got a nasty phone call today from someone who clearly thinks that fetuses are more important than the women who carry them, and in some of the hate-fueled garbage that she spewed at me, there was this gem:

How easy is it to kill a baby these days?

First of all, a fetus is not a baby. That's pretty typical rhetoric though, and that's not what I want to talk about.

I'm not sure what country she came from, but here in the good ol' US of A, it's not easy to get an abortion. In fact, it's getting harder and harder every year. In the past three years alone (2011-2013), there have been more abortion restrictions enacted than there were in the entire decade before (2001-2010).

In states such as Pennsylvania, a woman has to attend a "counseling" session at least 24 hours before her procedure. This extra step means that the woman has to come back to the office at least three times: first for the counseling session, second for the actual procedure, and third for a follow up visit. In many states (such as Texas), there are very few abortion providers, which means that women have to drive long distances (sometimes hundreds of miles) to get the procedure. The more times they have to come into the clinic, the more the travel expense is, and the harder it is to arrange to get off work or to get other childcare arrangements (most women who get abortions already have one or more children).

Even though multiple states already have mandatory counseling sessions and waiting periods, some states are trying to make those waiting periods longer. In January, Louisiana tried to implement a 30 day waiting period. That's an additional 4 weeks. In some places, women can't even get abortions if they're more than 20 weeks pregnant. The longer the woman is in the pregnancy, the more expensive it will be. And many clinics will not perform abortions after a certain number of weeks.

In addition to the counseling session, many states mandate an ultrasound before the procedure. In some states, the doctor has to show and describe the ultrasound to the woman, as if she doesn't understand that there's a fetus inside her. In some states, and in certain cases, the doctor would even have to do a transvaginal ultrasound for early pregnancies, since the fetus is very small and could be hidden behind the pelvic bone. (A transvaginal ultrasound is exactly what it sounds like: the doctor puts a wand inside the woman's vagina to see the fetus. It's invasive and unnecessary.)

Also in Pennsylvania, young women under 18 need to have parental consent before they can get an abortion. If they cannot or will not get consent from a parent, they have to go through a judge to get a judicial bypass. Even if they go through that process, the judge could still decide that they're too immature to get an abortion (but mature enough to carry, birth, and raise a child).

It's also important to mention that abortions are not cheap. For many people living around or below the poverty level, scraping up a few hundred dollars for an abortion and the related visits is nearly impossible. Most insurance plans will not cover abortions, and neither will any federal funds. The cost alone is sometimes enough to make abortion out of reach for low-income women.

And after a woman jumps through all those hoops and legislative burdens, she has to come to the clinic and face the protesters. Sometimes, the protesters are "peaceful"; they hold nasty signs and pray loudly at you. Many times, it's not that easy. Many protesters yell at patients and their family members: disgusting things about killing "babies" and going to hell. Some are violent and "in your face." A select few go with terrorism: shootings and bombings of abortion doctors and clinics. Even worse, the woman coming into the clinic often knows some of the protesters, especially if she goes to church with them. I've already had patients call to ask if we have a back door they can come in to avoid their fellow church members protesting out front.

And those are just the burdens on the patient. There are also plenty of laws about the actual abortion facilities and doctors that perform them, called TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). Some of these laws force abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, which can be difficult when local hospitals are not politically inclined to provide those privileges to abortion providers. Other laws affect the actual facilities where the abortions are performed. These laws force clinics to adhere to Ambulatory Surgical Facilities regulations (ASF), which are burdensome and unnecessary. For example, ASF regulations dictate frivolities such as how wide the hallways must be. Meeting ASF standards can be extremely costly, and they do not ultimately benefit the patients.

So please, don't try to tell me that it's "easy" to get an abortion in this country. Just because it's legal to get an abortion in the US, does not mean that it's easy or even accessible to most women.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/us/women-losing-access-to-abortion-as-opponents-gain-ground-in-state-legislatures.html
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/03/11/many-accessing-abortion-already-undue-burden/
http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/updates/2013/statetrends42013.html
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/01/27/new-louisiana-rules-require-30-day-waiting-period-legal-abortion/
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/15/1597701/wisconsin-forced-transvaginal-ultrasound/#

Prince Lestat is Back!

It's official!

Can I just say that I'm REALLY FUCKING EXCITED for this? Please excuse me while I put my life on hold to re-read the original five books of the Vampire Chronicles. October 28 can't come soon enough!

For more info: LA Times article

My Tats

I currently have three tattoos, and I'm planning on maybe one or two more. People sometimes ask what my tats mean, so here's a quick explanation.

Tat 1: Paw print for Mercy Thompson

The first tat I got was in summer of 2012: a paw print on my stomach in honor of Patricia Briggs and her character Mercy Thompson. Mercy is a kickass coyote shapeshifter in a world of werewolves, vampires, and other creatures bigger and scarier than she is, but she holds her own and is unapologetically herself.

Tat #1

Patricia Briggs - Moon Called

Tat 2: Raven for Edgar Allan Poe and Raven from Teen Titans

My second tat is a raven on my right calf. I got it on January 19, 2013, to commemorate the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, author of my favorite poem, The Raven. It's also a symbol of Teen Titan's Raven, who happens to be my favorite comic book character. I've identified with Raven ever since I first saw the Teen Titans cartoon in 2004.

Tat #2

Two Sides of Raven - Alassa (DA)

Tat 3: Bat for Bram Stoker

My latest tat is of a bat on my left calf. As you can see here, I've been obsessed with vampires for a long time. On November 8, 2013, I got a bat to commemorate the birthday of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula and the father of the contemporary vampire genre.

Tat #3

I don't have a source image for this one because I had my artist design it for me. Yay for cool tattoo artists!

Future Tats

I had wanted to get a lotus flower and the Sanskrit symbol for Om above it, but the more I think about it, the more I think it would be appropriation of Hindu or Indian culture. So I probably won't get it done.

Sprial goddess

Then I came across this image on Facebook, and I fell in love with it. I don't know where on my body I want to get it, but I'm pretty set on this image.

Superman / Bon Jovi

And I've wanted to get this combination of the Superman symbol and the Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet symbol for a long time. Still not sure where I want to get it, which is why I still haven't gotten it.

That's about it for now. Who knows, maybe later I'll find some other tattoos that I want to get. I just know that I love the ones that I have.