Don't Ever Rent From UHaul

they seriously should change the name of their company to We-Suck.

horrible horrible horrible customer service. a reservation isn't really a reservation. basically, you show up on that day, and if you're lucky, you get a truck. the 'confirmation' number they give you is bullshit. if someone from the company says they'll take your name and number and call you, they're lying. they commit fraud by charging bogus 'late' and 'gas' fees after you've returned the death trap they rented you.

i've been forced to rent from them again. i wanted to avoid this at all costs, but no such luck. this is prime moving season. i am going to take a video camera and four witnesses when i turn the truck in to document both the time of return and the amount of gas i put in the tank. then i am going to go out and date someone good-looking, single, and available who owns a pick-up truck. it will be the love affair of the century.

Broooooooaaaaaddddbaaaaannnnnnnddddd

good god. i despise not having 'net access at home. it's like not being able to breath. i do not have a tv either, so it can be truthfully said that i reside under a boulder. every day, i eagerly peruse the latest headlines as soon as i get into work when i should be working instead. it's just *awful*. it's the week of the democratic national convention. this is just pure and undulterated misery.

the part that makes me want to sob uncontrollably is that 'internet' wasn't even a household word until 1996. blogging went mainstream later than that. at one time my life was untouched by the marvels of the web, email, streaming video, and lots of music available for illegal downloading. it was a pure and innocent era of the occasional flirtation with a newspaper (i promise i did more than read the comics and tackle the crossword), but more frequently i floated about in a fog of uninformed apathy.

now i am weathering bouts of tremendous boredom, loud sighing, and unexpressed rage at reactionary conservatives. i can't rant as please. i have to hold it all in until i move. to express it without the aid of this blog would greatly frighten my poor cats. they just aren't used to seeing me walking around, punching things, muttering, and screaming obscenities. they're acclimated to the furious tappity tap tap of my well-worn keyboard, which has never threatened to interfere with the regular filling of their food dish and cleaning of their litterbox. they are not quite sure about how their human pet's descent into insanity would affect things, but they are quite sure that it can lead to no good.

i am drawing out LOTR as long as i can, but i am rapidly approaching the conclusion of the saga. this is all good timing since i have to pack and move by saturday. better blogging awaits!

an outing on "the simpsons"

andrew sullivan reports that a regularly recurring character on "the simpsons" will be coming out this season. who will it be?

this follow-up post is classic.

"sounds like david souter." best. line. ever.

my bet is definitely on principal skinner or marge simpson's sister (patty), and possibly lisa simpson. i also think the pub owner would be a great closet case. of course, if it were ned flanders, that would be subversive and like... totally notorious and fun!

betting pool? anyone? anyone?

and let's hear it for barack obama! (emily1, you can watch the speeches streamed from cnn when you get your internet back).

back to sunday school...

the scriptures seem to say don't be an asshole to me...

the only thing i remembered from sunday school was john 15:17 "love one another - this i command." but i think it's a pretty important thing to remember.

ya know, if jesus came back and heard and saw what was being done in his name i think he would flip out.

here's another one: "judge not, that ye be not judged." matthew 7:1

yeah, sure, i think it's ridiculous to assume that people should refrain from forming opinions, but i think it's pretty clear that there's an aversion to making unjustified verdicts and pointing fingers with reckless abandon.

"chill out," seems to be an ongoing theme in the new testament and, in the words of bill and ted, "be excellent to each other."

some themes never die... they're just overshadowed by idiots who want to play WWF smackdown.

i think "thou shalt not kill" was in the old testament somewhere. wonder what happened to that one?

It Ain't Just About Abortion

in order to understand what you're up against in the fight to preserve our hard-won rights, read this article.

it isn't just about abortion. it's about everything. it's about your right to decide who and when to marry, with whom, how, and when to have sex, as well as when to have children. i almost want to go to law school. i'd start suing left and right before these cretins every think twice about choosing someone else's method of contraception.

note to self-righteous-jesus-freaks:

if you are against abortion or contraception, then put your money where you claim your values are -- don't become a doctor and don't become a pharmacist.

btw, god called and said you're going to hell. he finds you as annoying and smarmy as i do.

QUICK! amend the constitution!

let bill clinton run for a third term!

that speech rocked da house sucka!

<3<3<3<3 bill!!!

break out the plastic!

despite being disinvited from speaking at the Democratic National Convention by the HRC (the "Hedging Rightwing-Cowed") of all people, margaret cho is embarking on a special tour dubbed "state of emergency," slated to hit key battleground states in the months before the election. the tour kicks off at the apollo theater in new york city. oh, and you can get her latest DVD early, if you donate to one of several non-profit organizations. i chose the servicemembers legal defense network, because dammit, gay people can shoot guns just as well as straight people.

an aside: when people like ann coulter and rush limbaugh run rampant spewing their nonsense under the guise of "political commentary," and the right, for the most part, shrugs and says "so what?" and meanwhile, the left gets so scared by right wing name-calling that they distance themselves from comedians like whoopi goldberg and margaret cho, it makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.

here are a couple of quotes from ann coulter:

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." (january 2002)

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (september 2001)

"God says, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'" (june 2001)

and a couple from rush limbaugh:

"Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. Who the hell cares."

"If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people--I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do--let the stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."

lovely. and exactly what did whoopi do?

she made a few jokes about bush's last name and dick cheney's first name. oh horrors! compared to the vile claptrap noted above, whoopi's jokes are just silly in comparison. i think the only thing she can be accused of is being unoriginal. sorry, whoopi, i made the same joke in 2000. :)

liberals should quit being chickenshit. politics is ugly; at least someone is making people laugh about it.

Free Market Special Protection Force

clearly this individual must be tracked down and sent to Capitalist Re-Education Camp. the free market in charitable works will be destroyed by this shameless act of dumping good works for free. we simply cannot allow this sort of thing to continue. if more people were brainwashed into following this person's example, we stand the risk of destroying the very thing that helps millions of sinners get into heaven every year. yes, good citizens of the world - if too many people started giving freely of their wealth, we could face the unimaginable horror of a world with no poor people. thousands upon thousands would have to go to hell since do-gooders don't get made in a world with no good to do.

the only acceptable response to winning a fortune through absolutely no effort of one's own is greedily grab your hundred dollar bills and press them lovingly against your cheeks or perhaps touch them to the tip of your nose and breath deeply, all the while whispering, 'Mine! All mine!' don't let it be said that your mama raised a fool -- make sure you report each and every act of genorosity on your income tax return. or better yet, arrange matters so that you don't have to pay any taxes. clearly, by off-loading all taxes onto the backs of the less fortunate, we will ensure a never-ending supply of targets for the loving charity of devout people for generations to come.

Longing For The Internet

it has been a little over ten days since i lost my internet at home. i am suffering severe withdrawal. i am dying for broadband. every day is a treacherous hike through a technological desert. my computer has been transformed from the brain at the center of my universe to an inert paperweight that makes funny beeps.

thank god i have a copy of The Lord of the Rings.

testing

news flash: sometimes kitty litter smells like poo.

greetings, i am emily2.

Eh, What?

i surfed to amazon today, and was greeted with the following message dated june 22:

My Life was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you bought Java How to Program (3rd Edition).

why, of course! i see the connection clearly.

Bullshit

four people have been charged with smuggling south american children into the US. one woman said she was helping 'starving' south american kids get a better life, or access to medical treatment.

bull-fucking-shit, you lying sack of rotten goat balls.

those kids were sold as prostitutes or slave labor.

Sensible Liberal

sensible liberals annoy me almost as much as the militant naderites.

Does This Water Feel Like It's Getting Hot Or Something?

link from the eschaton about moronic brownshirt fuckery.

commentor semper ubi chimes in with a personal anecdote.

you know, law enforcement's recent obsession with controlling people's use of cameras in public places raises a few questions. yeah yeah, i know it has something to do with 'security' and all that bullshit. it also makes me wonder is perhaps big brother and all his loyal maggots are trying to hide something.

Electricity, Bitches!

a museum in the UK wants to use their visitors' poopie to provide electricity for their building.
 
emily0:  did you mean to make an empty post?

the Yea Bitches

People You Shouldn't Trust In a Shithouse With A Muzzle On

man lights cigarette inside portable toilet, sets off explosion.

We Had To Destroy The Environment In Order To Save It

i'm speechless.

commentor four legs good is not:

I'd like to shove an old growth fucking log right up Nader's ass.

word.

Musings In Response to My Friend's Email

the post.
the email.

true - this idea is illustrated by, strangely enough, slavery and contract power. citizens of the united states have the power to contract and to own property. slaves, on the other hand, were not allowed to enter into contract and were not allowed to own property; they were the property of those who could (i.e. citizens). the power to contract is the ability to bind oneself to another - and by extension, this means that a citizen, effectively, owns himself: his body, his self, his entire being. thus, his body is his property.

oddly enough, charlie brought up slavery in his response to my comment that christian religious arguments against abortion aren't supported by the actual text of the bible. there are instances in which fetuses are clearly placed in a separate category. in my first post on this subject, i mentioned that the bible treats harm or killing of a fetus as a property crime rather than a murder -- specifically, a property crime against the woman's husband, not the woman herself, who is also considered his property.

charlie said that the bible also supports the concept of slavery, but he does not agree with it. yet, my friend, b., the law school student, states that by law, a slave cannot own property because he or she is the property of another. those who can own property are defined as 'citizens.' it would be interesting to know more about what is considered 'property' and how it pertains to a person's control over his or her body. you cannot, for instance, sell an organ. however, you can donate one. i'm not completely versed in the laws regulating donations, but i am sure there are a host of other restrictions. you cannot donate blood if you are a man who has had sex with another man, or a woman who has had sex with such a man. prostitutes, IV drugs users and their sexual partners are also forbidden to donate blood. you can be committed involuntarily to a psychiatric care facility if you attempt suicide. someone who helps another person commit suicide can be charged with a crime.

there are a morass of regulations that determine who receives life-saving organ donations. these rules and a big dose of chance determine who lives and who dies on the waiting list. people nearby the scene of a donor's untimely death are given much weightier consideration than those who are farther away. other factors such as age, health, and medical history also play a role. it is in the management of those known factors in making decisions as to who will receive those scarce organs, that the law has a say in matters of life and death.

the question now is -- does a woman's legally protected property rights over her own body cover her right to abortion? the supreme court has already ruled that the right to abortion is covered under the right to privacy. i think the argument acknowledges there is no specific mention of the right to privacy in the constitution. the majority opinion argued that this right was inherent in the language of the consitution and a body of legal precedents limiting the state's power over citizens.

the law does not recognize 'personhood' from the moment of conception onward. to do so would invite a host of other questions that have no legal precedent whatsoever. how would birth control pills be regulated under such a legal climate? a series of multiple-pill doses following unprotected sex, rape, or a contraception failure can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. if that fertilized egg is considered a person with full rights under the law, the 'morning-after' treatment is then an act of murder, subject to the same penalties applied to someone who smothers a ten-month-old infant.

does this fertilized egg's rights extend then to a legally defensible claim on the woman's body for the duration of the pregnancy? are parents required to donate a kidney to their dying child if they are suitable donors? they are not required to donate for anyone else. are they even required to donate blood? how far is the state allowed to invade the bodily privacy of a woman to prevent the murder of an embryo? how much control over her relationship with her doctor is the state permitted to have? a high percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. is every one of those subject to a full murder investigation such as in the case of a 6 month old infant who is shaken to death?

i think the idea of autonomy over your body is also somewhat illustrated in 4th amendment search and seizure cases. as a general rule, the police cannot forcibly excise evidence from someone's body, like making someone throw up or through surgery. i forget the other factors, but that came into mind. the police cannot search your house without a warrant, etc. it's like your body is somewhere the state cannot go, just like your property. yadda yadda. anyhow, this is a general illustration of the idea that one's body is private and the state can't go there.

could they prevent you from having surgery to remove something from your body? so far, i have noted that you cannot sell an organ, and i doubt you could have surgery that would undeniably kill you -- like having your brain removed for instance.

Puke

dear god:

why can't you get it over with and rapture these true believers already. the rest of us would really like to experience life without these idiots mucking things up.

A Response To My Abortion Post

from a friend in law school:

true - this idea is illustrated by, strangely enough, slavery and contract power. citizens of the united states have the power to contract and to own property. slaves, on the other hand, were not allowed to enter into contract and were not allowed to own property; they were the property of those who could (i.e. citizens). the power to contract is the ability to bind oneself to another - and by extension, this means that a citizen, effectively, owns himself: his body, his self, his entire being. thus, his body is his property.

i don't think i've seen this argument in very many places, and i don't even know where i got it. probably drifted into my psyche during constitutional law while i was half asleep. i think someone famous might have thought this up. i don't remember who it was if that is the case.

i think the idea of autonomy over your body is also somewhat illustrated in 4th amendment search and seizure cases. as a general rule, the police cannot forcibly excise evidence from someone's body, like making someone throw up or through surgery. i forget the other factors, but that came into mind. the police cannot search your house without a warrant, etc. it's like your body is somewhere the state cannot go, just like your property. yadda yadda. anyhow, this is a general illustration of the idea that one's body is private and the state can't go there.

of course there are the abortion line of cases, but i just wanted to point out other realms where this idea pokes its head out.

Preach It!

hells yeah!

I am so sick and tired of the vapid way that liberal educators discuss the need for multiculturalism in this country and yet their own academic establishment is filled only with white faces. I'm so sick of the way this country acts like we somehow have a moral superiority to the rest of the world and that we are not destroying mankind with our consumption of the earth's resources and our exportation of hollow values. What, do we think we are not racist because we do not wear swastikas on our coats?

snip ...

Grrrr.....

and to think, i complained about the heinous traffic driving back to boston from new york city the day of the gay pride parade.

where's hothead paisan when ya need her?

Some Thoughts On A Recent Abortion Debate

recently, i got into a tussle with charlie, a winger who posts at kevin drum's blog. he made some snide comment about calling a fetus or embryo a 'potential human being' in a discussion thread for a post that was actually about kerry's vp options. this was before kerry chose edwards.

i felt like trolling the troll. yes yes, i know i shouldn't feed them, but sometimes i do it just for the hell of it. i promise to refrain from now on.

so, i nettled him a little about his vaunted pro-life position since he's so damned pro-war, which by definition involves rampant mutilation and killing of born human beings. at the end of my snide response, i got in a dig about the early christian church's doubts regarding whether women actually had souls or not because charlie never tires of talking about his deep and abiding christian faith. he said he didn't agree with that position, so i asked him how his anti-abortion stance was really all that different from questioning whether women had souls or not. cmdicely, another frequent commentor at kevin's blog, called me intellectually dishonest for asking that question because the two were not even related.

i tried to follow up, but the thread was already dying since it was over a day old, so i dropped the issue.

i dispute that the two are not related, however. if the church at that time questioned the existence of women's souls, then exactly what did they think women's purpose in life was, then? if they didn't have souls, then obviously they were put on earth for men to get their rocks off and to have their children. even the bible itself assigns the unborn to a different status than born people. if one harms a pregnant woman such that she miscarries, the penalty demanded is payment to her *husband*. this, of course, categorizes both the woman and the fetus as property of her husband.

outlawing abortion essentially codifies that attitude towards women. they would no longer be the autonomous proprietors of their own bodies. they would be reduced essentially to the status of life support systems. i don't like abortion. i wouldn't have one. but, something in me is completely repulsed by the attitude that a woman's body isn't her property. i'm also aware that one can be anti-abortion and still pro-choice. i am one of those people. but, a huge portion of the so-called pro-life movement isn't pro-choice.

many of the same people who want to outlaw abortion vigorously support 'free markets' and sneer at any social spending as an attack on 'property rights.' i seriously doubt they would support a law requiring people to donate their extra kidneys to terminally ill matching recipients. i also doubt they would support a social system that strips anyone of their surplus 'property' in order to feed and house the multitudes of people in this world who are dying of hunger and exposure to the elements. we don't even allow the harvesting of organs from dead people who said they didn't want their organs donated in the event of their deaths.

yet, outlawing abortion would force pregnant women who do not want to carry their pregnancies to term to feed and house their fetuses with their bodies. a pregnant woman's body then effectively becomes the rightful property of the fetus for the duration of her pregnancy. would these same people raise strenuous objections to a dead person's right to be buried whole since, after all, they are dead and no longer need their organs? people die every day waiting for an organ.

F911

so, i finally saw F911 last night. i can see why the right wing is terrified of michael moore in general and particularly of this movie.

it has flaws. however, it contains the most powerful collection of iraq war images i have ever seen. more so than the torture photos which had the disturbingly banal character of 'America's Funniest Home Videos.' the images in this movie are infinitely more shocking. there was some uproar over the R rating, but i agree with it now that i've seen the gruesome footage the movie contains.

michael moore is a master at confronting his viewers with scenes of anguish and grief. the right fears this movie because it shows the consequences of the war without flinching. they can't argue that lila lipscomb's pain isn't real and that her son didn't die because of the war. neither can they continue to spout the fiction that the collatoral damages were minimal. there is no such thing as 'minimal collatoral damage' in warfare. the phrase itself makes me want to puke rivers. when one neighborhoood with no connections to the insurgent militia has to hold five funerals for their collatorally damaged dead, you cannot possibly say that it was 'minimal' for them.

i don't really want to go into a long and thoughtful post about the movie. just go see it. even if you support the war, especially if you support the war, you should see this film. you need to see soldiers with their arms and legs blown off. you need to understand that there are terrified people running around that country, carrying limp, little children who have wet their pants in terror because of the situation we allowed to develop there. that is war is about. not freedom, not democracy, not any of those high-falutin' values. even 'good' wars bring countless tragedies to innocent people. like i said, there is no such thing as 'minimal collatoral damage.' it is precisely because of this that anyone who supports the iraq war should know exactly what the costs are. i have not one iota of respect for a war supporter who refuses to fully acknowledge and recognize the brutality it entails.

and now for my rant:

for you assholes who are angry that lila liscomb participated in this film, fuck you. fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.

did i make myself clear?

............................FUCK YOU........................................

you assholes don't 'support the troops.' you don't get to decide whether their grief is 'appropriately' expressed or not. you don't get to decide whether they have the right to participate in this film. people who really support the troops don't hold the asinine and narcissistic attitude that it is the troops' and their families' responsibility to make you feel good about being in favor of the war. they have the right to question whether their sacrifice was worth something. they have the right to question whether this war was justified or handled correctly. after all, it's their asses on the line. those of you who got your panties in a wad over lila's incredibly honest and moving expression of her pain, grief and doubt need to pull your heads out of the fetid chambers of your asses. you don't support the troops if you expect them and their families to keep quiet about what they really think and feel. you aren't even patriotic.

so, again, go fuck yourself with a spiked dildo.

Apartment Search

my friend jane and i found an apartment yesterday in cambridge, marking a major milestone in a long saga. we decided to get a place together last september. in december, her landlord told her and her roommates that they had to move out by february because he had sold the building. it was the end of an era. that apartment, the 'house with the red door', had been a low rent haven in a city with skyrocketing housing costs since 1997. i lived there from summer 1997 to summer 1998, and for the summers of 1999 and 2000.

by the end, it was falling apart. the landlord had already redone the bathroom because it literally began to rot from the inside out. jane even hated living there by the end because the grime of the years had made it dingy and unpleasant. even so, it was incredibly sad when she had to move out. all of us who lived there have years of memories attached to that place.

the balcony was the best feature of all. it overlooked a local ballfield where endless baseball games took place in the summer. we were on the third floor and no one else used their balconies, so it was a semi-private outside living room. i used to work all hours of the night out there. i miss the good old 90's groovy internet job boom.

i never imagined i'd live in such a place again when i upgraded my lifestyle following the procurement of a comfortable office job at a local pharmaceutical company. however, i have returned to student status and my budget is meager. thus, i have returned to those jewels in the rough -- cheap apartments in the cambridge area.

central square was the ideal compromise for both of us. i go to umass, and she attends bu. we both have lived in the neighborhood there for years and loved it. jane did not want to move to somerville or dorchester, two other cheaper neighborhoods that offered me easy access to my school and somewhat less easy access to bu. she was a sport about it though and agreed to consider apartments there.

two days ago, i found an ad for a two bedroom apartment for $1050 a month, a good $400 dollars cheaper than most other two bedrooms in that location. when we went to look at it, it became clear why it was so cheap. the building is *ancient*. the floor is warped beyond reasoning in the kitchen. the bathroom contains a tub that must be at least 40 years old. the stove likewise appears to hail from an earlier era.

however, there were no scents of mold and rot. the ceilings appeared to be clean and undamaged by leaks. the floor, despite being warped, appeared to be in good condition -- dry and sturdy. there are two rooms with beautiful hardwood flooring, but one of the bedrooms has what appears to be 40 year old linoleum tiles. it's really quite kitch. essentially we are moving into an apartment right out of the 1960s. the building itself must be some 40 years older than that.

to be truthful, it's in better condition than the house with the red door. it doesn't directly face the street because it's tucked behind other buildings. we have access to a semi-private yard, and all the major appliances work. i tested all the sinks and the toilet and all of them functioned properly. so, we wrote a deposit check and went out to celebrate.

Boston Roommate Ads

i love craigslist.

$500 - Room in 3BR Apartment--SEPT 1

You:

· Age: 30s
· Male or female/straight
· Consider yourself: socially well-adjusted, neat, clean, responsible, social, happy, good sense of humor—you get along well with others
· You have a job or are in grad school
· You are educated, social, have interesting hobbies/passions, have friends in the area, will not be voting for Bush …