so. here we are.

Here we are. Old friends since the craziness of Bush 2.

And now I think I might need to take a break. Oh, not permanently, but a bit of one.

Screed will not die, but it's not going to be the main place for me to be online anymore.

If you want the short and shallow me, find me on Twitter @DeliaChristina or @DeliaC.

If you want something more than shallow but less than long-form, and more social, find me on Facebook.

If you're a hip chick, there's always Google +.

When the inspiration hits me, I'll post some long things here, but that inspiration is competing with an awful lot of other stuff. Catch y'all later!

asshat of the day: people with penises

Weiner Says He Sent Photos and Lied, But Won't Resign - NYTimes.com

I swear to god, I don't understand men - especially men in elected office.
There are some other things I don't understand:

The massive ego that short circuits a man's Good Decision-Making Brain Center makes me wonder what other good decisions are being blocked.

The over-weening pride in one's phallus that makes a man think that all women want to gaze up on it. (Hint: we DON'T.)

The ballsy arrogance that empowers a dude to brazenly lie about something that will inevitably be discovered.

Men are either immensely stupid or ...no. Just immensely stupid.

Easter Back in the Day

When I was a kid, Easter was the holiday you had to work for.

The hunt for the perfect Easter dress would heat up a few weeks in advance of Easter Sunday. This was a process that would almost always end in tears as mom would make her choice, I or my sister would pout, and so on, until a dress was chosen in exasperation that made none of us happy. (This was later rectified when Mom decided to sew our Easter dresses - which established a whole other interminable, labor-intensive and emotionally draining process.)

The rehearsals for the Easter program would begin in earnest at least 2 months ahead, as every kid in church was handed a part of the Easter Story (from the Triumphant Entry, through the Last Supper, Betrayal, Trial, to the Cross Carrying, Crucifixion and then Resurrection/Ascension + Various Eyewitness Accounts) and expected to memorize ALL of the King James verses and recite them dully into a microphone to beaming parents. I was usually given something about Peter's denial, or the stone being rolled away. My sister managed to always get the short verses.  Typical. 

Oh, lord. The flashback I'm having!

Then there was the hair preparation -- oh, the hair preparation! All day Saturday watching my mom get redder and redder in the face as I tipped back in the kitchen chair, all my hair poured into the kitchen sink, and my mom labored to shampoo, condition and then detangle and roller set my thick curly hair in giant pink rubber tubes. And then watching her do the same thing with my sister.  Spending the rest of the day dyeing dozens of hardboiled eggs with rollers in our heads so tight they pulled our eyes upwards into little slants and we could barely blink.

And then the next day, waking up early on Sunday - new shoes, new dress, new tights, new exhortations not to mess up our hair which hung in long, perfect ringlets, thick like bratwurst. Rushing to church, taking care not to crush our hair, our dresses, our Easter baskets, our eggs for the hunt after church, not to scuff our shoes. Watching my hair grow bigger and bigger with the day's humidity. And really cognizant that my little sister looked cuter than I.

(Poofy on a tiny person looks cute; poofy on a person who's already shaped like a poof looks POOFY.)

Fidgeting through a sonorous Baptist sermon on Christ's rising, sweating in the gold sunlight of the sanctuary. Hair still getting bigger while the ribbons are limper. Watching the clock tick past noon, past one...and now the Easter program. Lining up in the foyer of the church, desperately trying to remember my single piece of scripture (without which Christ isn't truly risen), loudly reciting my part, painfully watching a girl struggle through her piece which she forgot, balefully staring at my sister as she squeaks out her piece and runs back to Mom's lap. Typical.

And then, somehow, oblivious as a group of church men leave the sanctuary to walk across the street, to the janky abandoned lot, to hide Easter eggs. Did we ever clean this lot? I don't think so. It was filled with the detritus of the South Central neighborhood around our church - broken bottles, cigarette butts, beer cans.  Did we care? No. As soon as Christ was risen, ascended into heaven and various eye witness accounts were shared, we were dismissed. We ran across the street, crashing through weeds, old tires and wires, to hunt eggs. It was really a wonder none of us ever needed a tetanus shot afterward or fell over a dead prostitute.

But I also remember how upset we all were when, years later and Easter egg hunts were well in my past, the lot's owner decided to build an ugly stucco apartment building on it. The unjust-ness of it almost made me cry.

After such a long day, my sister and I would change out of our dresses and into our play-clothes; but we kept our fancy hair and we'd lay on our stomachs on the livingroom floor, peeling eggs, eating chocolate and watching Star Trek while the grownups talked after dinner.

There was no better feeling than this - the luxury, excess, indulgence, naughtiness and prettiness all mixed in together. All marked with a smear of chocolate across our lips. Heaven. Thank you, Jesus.

May your Easter festivities be as randomly joyful.

Know what cures work rage?
Frolics, barbecue and lots of sleep.

MY labor. MINE.

I won't go into the minute details of my work rage right now.

But I'll just give some sage advice to budding sr. managers out there:

* If you have never put together an effective presentation, don't question how many hours go into creating one.
* And if all you have to do is open your mouth and speak the words that other people write, do NOT expect an open attitude about your revisions. You want to do it? You do it.
* If you aren't the one lining up the panel, confirming the speakers, prepping the panel, creating the content, writing the talking points, herding the participants, testing the A/V, editing the presentations, collecting all the materials, calling the hotel and reviewing catering, room set up, registration capacity and so on, don't ask why someone wants to end the day in blessed silence on the train (in the bar car) rather than inside a car with you back to the city.
* And if you haven't done all those things you BETTER let the person who did roll in at 10 am the next day because she's effing exhausted and brain-drained.

That is all. Carry on.

glad i'm not the only one

Apoplectic about Abortion: One Woman’s Emotional Roller Coaster | Sexuality/Gender | Religion Dispatches:

"I know my rage is hurting me as much as it is hurting my opponents. Can I try to understand what the sex police want? Do they want to justify their bathroom behavior? Do they want their mothers to “find something?” Are they themselves capable of the abstinence that they are forcing on women? As a pastor, the only explanation I can give for the immoral stupidity of the current proposal is here: some people on the religious right really hate their own sexuality. That almost makes me sad enough to care about them. Just almost..."

I'm glad I'm not the only church lady who struggles with the Golden Rule thing.

I want to grab a hammer but I know smashing testicles isn't constructive or helpful.

More's the pity.

asshat of the week: Idaho (joining a growing group of patriarchal f*ckers)

ThinkProgress » Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill Because ‘The Hand Of The Almighty’ Was At Work:

The disgusting number of women-hating pieces of legislation being pushed through various state legislatures is astounding.

But I think the Idaho bill is particularly galling: even if you were the victim of sexual assault or family sexual abuse you would be forced to keep the pregnancy.

It's a double assault against a woman's body and mind.

These fucking men seem to have a real problem with women having an independent will.
You know, like men have.

I had a conservative guy respond to one of my tweets today and he seemed to imply that simply having a reproductive system automatically obligated a woman to use it to reproduce. Whether or not she wanted to.

If we take all these bills together, women aren't going to be allowed to make decisions about anything on our own:
We can't buy contraception.
We can't terminate a pregnancy if we are raped.
We can't terminate a pregnancy if we aren't.
Our exes get to sue us if we get an abortion.
We can't say no to an ultrasound.
We can't rely on our own religious (or irreligious) counselors.
We have to wait for an abortion.
We can't get an abortion in our own state.
We can't use our money (or the State's money) to pay for abortion.

What can we do, in this world these women-hating men want to create?

Oh, get pregnant, get raped, and stay pregnant.

I want to smash some testicles.