Syndicate and Hague

I was already a little twisted over the article that ran in the Star Tribune about U of MN’s president Bob Bruininks this weekend. Then I looked at my student account for the coming school year and nearly had a heart attack. Tuition went up $353/semester ($706 a year) for graduate students, making annual tuition alone over $10,000 per year. Tuition for undergraduates went up to $550/year and is pushing $10,000 per year.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but the sticker shock of my upcoming degree combined with an uncomfortably cheerleading Strib article and the sadness I have looking at my undergraduate alma mater (and employer and place where I’m getting my PhD) become further and further out of reach for average Minnesotans is pretty profound.

The article was already sour to me when it stated that “Bruininks also would not back down when clerical workers walked off the job a year ago, and the strike fell apart.” Summing up what happened last year in those few words that favored the administration was inaccurate at best. The pay scales at the University as we strive ever further towards that “top three” designation are, as in corporate America, increasingly skewed. Faculty in certain schools make incredible salaries. Whether or not the salaries are deserved/necessary is a point of ambivalence for me–I see both the pros and cons–but to essentially put the workers at the University “in their place” while lavishing senior administrators and plenty of faculty with six figure incomes and assorted perks is, in my opinion, simply immoral.

Anyone who works in academia long enough knows that the quest for “top three” status isn’t about the University’s undergraduate education. It’s about securing grants, having top notch graduate programs, doing groundbreaking research…and all of those are good things, in my opinion. However, there is that pesky reality that we are also supposed to educate thousands of new undergraduate students every year.

The naive undergrads who commented on the Strib article think this quest for glory has been done for them, but that’s just not in evidence. We still rely heavily on graduate students and adjuncts to handle undergraduate courses and I don’t see that changing.

As for the idea that the U should be an elite institution and the people who cannot get in (nevermind that the article didn’t exactly address students who can get in, but cannot see how to finance such a hefty price tag), I’m again ambivalent. If you want the U to be the “pinnacle” of public university education in Minnesota, I’m not necessarily opposed to that. But we’d better damn well get our priorities straight. The U can be a fantastic school and an affordable school, if we decide that it should be.

While I whine a bit about the amount I’m going to have to put in for my graduate degree, I’m not actually very broken up about graduate tuition rates. Graduate school is nice, it certainly gets you places a BA/BS doesn’t, it tends to bump your pay up, but it’s just not necessary that masses of Minnesotans get masters degrees and PhDs.

However, pinnacle or not, the kids of Minnesota should have access to the U. They shouldn’t be priced out of an education here. The people of this state have a vested interest in an educated workforce and our student populations should have affordable access to everything from the community colleges to the state universities to the University. It’s really that simple.

Apparently, that girl reverts to all her obsessive behaviors. Worked all night, save the time I was on the phone with Megan. Installed the new WP and plotted future improvements to the site. Read and plotted grant applications for my real job. Tried to break away from the computer. Failed. Wondered if I wanted to incorporate Twitter in my blog.

I was also reading a bunch about salary negotiation/feminist finance type stuff and feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of saving for a down payment on a house. I know everyone says “do it now! it’s so cheap!” but those were the same lines I was being fed two years ago - “do it now! interest rates are so low!” And then everyone on the planet got foreclosed on. Hyperbolic, I know, but there are dozens and dozens of foreclosed/foreclosing homes in my neighborhood and you can feel the stress of it when you walk down the street.

Something I don’t really advise at night, now.

To those of you who read here, I know you’re not much of a commenting crowd. You often respond on Twitter or in person, depending, but what improvements do you want on the site? I could thread the comments, but won’t if people still don’t care to comment. I could pull in a twitter feed to keep some kind of content fresh.

I can anticipate topic areas this fall. Let’s have a preview, shall we? (Oh humor me, Megan will be back tomorrow and I won’t need you to put me to sleep at night again for a while. Let’s just talk a little longer.)

Things that will likely come up beginning in September:

• ruminations on technology in education
• bitching about how much I dislike the statistics class I just spent a billion dollars on books for
• thinking about the role of race in researchers and, by extension, the role of researchers in developing race
• election ‘08
• the old standbys of feminism, racism, and cool technology things and promoting my friends’ activities because they are awesome
• and of course - how googley-eyed I am over Megan

Yup. I think getting off teh interwebs is a good idea…

I’m getting bogged down in trying to improve my tag cloud.  Unfortunately, that “work” thing that I have to do takes precedence.  Dammit.

A moment, though, on my funny day yesterday.  Nothing pulls in the viewers like a little maniacal raging…but when there aren’t really any consequences, speaking your mind isn’t really a brave/innovative thing.  I doubt I’d have written a similarly vituperative post about the academic hand that feeds me–I can be critical, sure, but boy I was just furious yesterday!

That said, I think I was validly angry/annoyed/mortified…so nothing has really changed.

In completely unrelated news, Twin Cities citizens better get ready to hide because not only are the RNC and Ron Paulites coming to town, so is Ralph Nader. Sigh. My plan is to hide in my non-destination neighborhood and hope things don’t get explosive.

I think I’m going to upgrade my WordPress installation tonight.  This is probably inadvisable since a ridiculous number of people have visited my blog since I railed on the mobile web thing yesterday, but Megan is away and I need a break from grant-thinking.

Think I can do it all in an hour?  We shall see…that’s the time I’ve budgeted for it.  If I lose posts/comments, I do apologize.

So I was at this thing today on the “mobile web” and, mostly, how to market to whom and blah blah blah. I often like going to more corporate-ish things because they tend to be light years ahead of Universities about conceptualizing and implementing ways of using technology. I’m pretty good at parsing the data and coming up with ideas based on the concepts, but less evil and more relevant to the work we do at the University.

Sometimes, however, I want to strangle presenters.

Look, I know advertising as a field is demonic. I do. This is a field in which you spend all your time thinking about how to sell people things that they:

• don’t need
• don’t want

“Oh, but Sara!” you might say if you’re in advertising and pretending what you do isn’t mostly evil, “we’re just giving people options/trying to tell them how to make their lives easier/no one is forcing anyone to buy anything.” Pshaw.

Here’s what set me off.

First, the keynote spoke–I have no inherent problem with what he was saying. He was really telling it like it is. People want to make money on mobile tech. Ad people are trying to figure out how to do that. It’s not really my scene and creeps me out a bit, but whatever.

But then this…this…ignorant, trifling woman gets up as part of a duo and repeatedly says horrific, offensive things that wound up causing me to blow the joint after she finished. (I couldn’t believe how much more I would want to strangle her by the end of the presentation).

It started with slides. Her point was to prove the pervasiveness of mobile. Fine. She called it (I paraphrase) the first truly democratized medium. I stifled a laugh. I mean, I think cell phones have done a lot of great things, but anything you have to pay a chunk of money for every month isn’t really “democratized,” and it’s not like the library has a bunch of cell phones lined up for free usage. Plus…we’re at an event that is centered around targeting and tailoring content to individuals and trying to find out as much as we can about people so that we can inundate them with messages to get them to buy things. C’mon.

As proof of her concept (yay mobile happy fun democratized equality!), she showed slides of people of varying races/nationalities using cell phones. Whoopee. It’s common knowledge to me, and probably to many of you, that cell phones really have revolutionized communication in a lot of areas that don’t have landline infrastructures. Poorer areas/countries and developing areas/countries have used mobile phones for some time now because throwing up cell towers is way cheaper than landline wiring a whole country.

Saying that isn’t offensive, because it’s true. Saying “and mobile phones have allowed people in places like Africa who didn’t have jobs to start businesses” (picture of a cell phone kiosk) is. Which was all kinds of ridiculous, but got worse. There was a photograph of a girl outside a small, circular house with a thatched roof in a pretty treeless, desert-looking area and she was holding up her phone. This girl lived in the country of Africa. You know, that country…the really big one…anyway, but the comment about that picture was something like “You see the funny house and clothes, but she looks just like a normal 13 year old with her phone.”

Because, you know, she was a normal kid with a phone.

Of course, the woman at the front probably doesn’t spend much time thinking of people in ways other than what demographics they happen to fall into and how she can sell things to them, but her assuredness and confidence in what she was saying made me ill. The utter elitism and exoticism and ugh. I was so angry that, when her next part of the presentation started, I just about lost it.

She started talking about the sectioned off demographics of cell phone usage. The first were “mobile moms.” Because, and I paraphrase, moms are really busy! they have to manage the family and their friends and they used to manage from the kitchen and hear about everyone’s goings on at the bfast/dinner table, but now everyone is busier and cell phones help mom feel like she’s there because she’s the ultimate multitasker blah blah blah blah. No mention of career. Lots of qualifications about “of course, not all moms are like this, but…”

And this (way way late, Sara) gets to what drove me away. Or, rather, what drove me to my bike and made me decide that reading through documents for tomorrow’s meeting was more important/interesting than being there.

Today’s multitasking mom? Is a creation of the ad industry. We can make choices. We can change how we live–buying less means you don’t have to make as much means you don’t have to work as much. Your kids don’t need $800 strollers or ten activities a week. They don’t need all their time scheduled. You don’t need to do it. You don’t need to look 30 when you’re 55. You just don’t.

And I had a revelation. It takes me a really long time to make decisions on purchases. But not on life. For instance, I decided it was what I wanted to do to move in with Megan, so I did it. I decided I should apply to grad school, so I did it. All of these major life decisions were quick and easy.

But trying to figure out what new cell phone I should buy? I’ve labored over the decision for eight months. It took me 2 years to figure out what kind of car I wanted to replace my crappy car with. And the reason is that I hate being marketed to. I’m filled with WANT from advertising, but there is a larger part of me that says waiiiit a minute, Sara. What do you need, what do you want, and where is the happy medium? Or, is there a happy medium? I’m not immune to impulse purchases, but I really try to fight the excess consumerism. As much as I can in this society.

Anyway, in honor of all that is evil and here to make women feel like crap, here are some great episodes of Sarah Haskins’ “Target Women” segments of Current TV.

“Feeding your fucking family”

Botox

Hey! Did you hear? Russia and Georgia are pretty much at war. There had been a build up of Russian troops in South Ossetia and then all hell broke loose. This is what the Georgian prez had to say about it:

Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said Russia’s ambitions were even more extensive. He declared that Georgia was in a state of war, and said in an interview that Russia was planning to seize ports and an oil pipeline and to overthrow his government.
(NY Times)

Gosh, you might say, I don’t even know where Georgia is in relation to Russia! Well, I’m here to help with that.

Sadly, the U.S. has no moral authority to say anything the Russians need to take seriously. How can this not make you laugh?

The Bush administration said it would seek a resolution from the United Nations Security Council condemning Russian military actions in Georgia.
(NY Times)

UN Security Council, eh? Well. We’ve always cared so much about what they think.

As one top adviser described the argument, Mr. Bush must decide ”whether to go it alone or go to the U.N.” with one final if largely symbolic effort to force Mr. Hussein to re-admit arms inspectors, who left Iraq three and a half years ago.

…

Secretary General Kofi Annan seemed to confirm those fears at a news conference today in Botswana, when he said, ”The U.N. is not agitating for military action” against Iraq.

China and Russia, which both have veto power in the Security Council, oppose military action. France, which also holds a veto, has demanded a Security Council vote and has made it clear it would oppose military action without evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq.
(NY Times, 2002)

And now,

The Russians issued an ultimatum to Georgian forces to disarm or face attack, and proceeded to occupy government buildings there, the Georgians said.

And the South Ossetia conflict also appeared to have widened, with Georgia accusing Russia of capturing the town of Gori in central Georgia.
(BBC)

Sooooo…wait…I did promise to tell you why everyone should STFU about John Edwards, didn’t I? Yeah, that was kind of a bait and switch. But not really, because the lack of reporting (outside more “global” news outlets) on this conflict is partially because the news fucking sucks. They spend a ridiculous amount of time going over the details of Edwards’s affair, and nothing on a war breaking out.

But here are my thoughts about Edwards:

It was dumb. But is an affair really our business? My philosophy on sexual ‘improprieties’ is that if it’s personal, it’s your own business, but if you spend your days as a moral crusader trying to invade other peoples’ bedrooms, then it’s public business. I think it’s a bit melodramatic to say, as Andrea Mitchell did on Countdown on Friday, that Edwards’s public service career is over. And, by extension, Elizabeth Edwards’s.

Do you hear that? That is the sound of my eyes rolling so far into the back of my head that they snapped whatever attaches them to my body.

Did affairs affect the careers of John McCain (HuffPo, LA Times)? Newt Gingrich (See below? Did toe-tapping in a Minneapolis airport destroy Larry Craig? What about David Vitter going to a prostitute?

Nope. They hung onto office.

A taste of Gingrich’s affair:

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.” (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’” Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
(Washington Monthly)

How about the criminal behavior of other Republicans (Well, Vitter is in this group as well) Here’s a list from Kos. I’ll give you some highlights (links to sources are found on the page I just linked to).

• John Bolton: George W. Bush’s latest Ambassador to United Nations. Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department.
• Robert Bauman, Republican congressman and anti-gay activist from Maryland, was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
• Bob Barr, Republican Congressman from Georgia. Sponsored the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, saying “The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit.” Was married three times. Paid for his second wife’s abortion. Failed to pay child support to the children of his first two wives and while married to his third and present wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of strippers at his inaugural party.
• Jon Grunseth, Republican businessman and candidate for Minnesota governor, withdrew his candidacy after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter, and tried to grope one. “I’ve made some mistakes” he said.
• Newt Gingrich, Republican from Georgia, married three times. Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. Informed one wife he was filing for divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer treatments.
• Henry Hyde, Republican Congressman from Illinois, Judge who oversaw Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, prominent opponent of reproductive rights, who had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children, during the course of which she and her husband were divorced.
• Bob Livingston, former Congressman (R-La.), Speaker of the House; resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery — at the same time he was leading calls for impeachment of President Clinton.
• Jeff Miller, (R-Cleveland), Senate Republican Caucus Chairman in Tennessee and the sponsor of Tennessee’s Marriage Protection act, getting divorced (as of April 2005) because of an affair he was having with an office aide. Miller described the Tennessee Marriage Protection Act as a means of preserving the sanctity of marriage. He opposed an amendment, however, which stated that “Adultery is deemed to be a threat to the institution of marriage and contrary to public policy in Tennessee.”
• John Peterson, Congressman (R-Pa), accused of sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment by six women. Peterson has refused to admit a crime, saying only “I may have been an excessive hugger.”
• Jim West, Spokane Mayor. Supported a bill, which failed, would have barred gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. Voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS. Proposed that “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person” among teens be criminalized. Had a sexual affair with an 18 year old boy.

And then there’s the stuff that crops up on a daily basis.

• Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.
• Yesterday afternoon, Allen was sentenced on a misdemeanor count of solicitation for prostitution (in lay terms: they done punished him for trying to blow that guy in the potty room).
• The complaint, filed by Clearfield police Chief Jeffrey Rhone and signed by [District Attorney] Shaw, accuses Walker of using his cell phone to videotape a former girlfriend in an intimate moment with another man on Aug. 25, 2007. The complaint also alleges that he had contact with her on two other occasions, despite being told by a police officer on Aug. 25 that he should avoid further contact and that charges were pending.

As I’m sure you could tell, I could go on and on and on and on and on.

All I’m saying is: I don’t care who the hell you sleep with unless you go around making homophobic statements/legislating things like Defense of Marriage Acts/trying to outlaw abortion/promoting abstinence-only education/acting like a puritan freak about sex.

By the way–have you heard there’s a war a-brewin?

Something the Bush administration has taught us is that you can lie through your teeth, doing the complete opposite of what you say, but if no one cares enough or bothers to check out what you’re saying, your lie is seen as truth.

It is the most supremely cynical of tactics and, sadly, it has worked an awful lot over the last eight years.

Jack and Jill Politics wrote today about a perfect, blatant example of this. Those of us who pay attention to politics know that John McCain not only didn’t support, but straight up opposed recognizing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a holiday. Their blog gives the highlights:

* FACT: McCain Supported Republican AZ Governor’s Decision To Rescind MLK Holiday.
* FACT: McCain Supported Gov. Evan Mecham’s Decision In 1987 To Rescind Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
* FACT: McCain Voted Against Creating Martin Luther King Holiday.
* FACT: In 1994, McCain Sided With Senator Jesse Helms and Voted To Eliminate Funding For Martin Luther King Commission.
* FACT: McCain Voted Against The Civil Rights Act Of 1990 FOUR Times.

The reason they bring this up is that McCain is lying about his record. Saying, in the video they post, that “I am proud of that record, from fighting for the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday in my state to sponsoring specific legislation that would prevent discrimination in any shape or form in America today.”

Liar. Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar. Heinous, egregious, horrible liar. This is only an example, though, of his lying. Last week, in fact, he said in a campaign event that he wouldn’t raise taxes, then on Stephanopolous said that, when negotiating Social Security, nothing is off the table, including increasing payroll taxes. It’s not even a flip flop, it’s a lie. Because - and be sure of this - next time he’s asked at a campaign event, he will go back to saying no taxes.

If you want citations on the MLK votes, you can Google them. I’m sick of him getting a free pass on his errors. I’m sick of his lies becoming truth. Not knowing the difference between Shia and Sunni, not knowing that the border between Pakistan and Iraq is another country (Iran), having the media continue pretending that he’s a moderate on things like abortion. He isn’t. I am sick. Of. It.

In light of my “rah rah gay marriage” posts over the last few months, I thought I’d point you to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which takes up the social justice issues that marriage does not/should not solve and that we have a responsibility to address in our society.

Unlike those who decry advances in gay marriage because it means monogamy (it doesn’t if you don’t want it to) or because we should focus on other things first (nothing would ever happen if we looked at issues that way), the Alternatives to Marriage Project appears to have their collective heads screwed on straight. (Ha. So to speak.)

I’ll disclaim that a friend of mine just joined the board, so there you have that, but my friends are smart people…so…yeah.

From their website:

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is not against marriage. But we believe that unmarried relationships also deserve validation and support. People may be pressured to marry by their families, friends, and communities. They may also face marital status discrimination. We oppose this unfair treatment and advocate for the equal rights of unmarried people.

According to the 2000 Census, there are eleven million unmarried people living with an unmarried partner in the United States today, and this number has grown 72% in the last decade alone. Millions more people are not currently in relationships or do not live with their partner, and have no plans to marry. There are many reasons people choose not to get married. Some people, like same-sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people, are not legally allowed to marry.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is open to everyone, including singles, couples, married people, people in relationships with more than two people, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. We welcome our married supporters, who are among the many friends, relatives, and allies of unmarried people.

Not to be crass, but seriously, all y’all libertarians and Republicans can go screw yourselves. Live on an island where you don’t care about the society you live in. Tear each other to pieces in some Lord of the Flies fantasyland where the strong survive and blah blah blah.

This is a note I might otherwise post on my Twitter feed. A 140 character WTF, but this is serious.

First, I’ll tell you why I’m beyond outraged. The Star Tribune wrote today that police and fire calls may start to be billed to the recipients of said services in Duluth.

Let me quote from the article:

Duluth city administrators are considering charging fees to property owners and drivers for police and fire responses.

City spokesman Jeff Papas says the amount of the fees haven’t been set yet.

If the Duluth City Council agrees to charge fees, it would then set an amount. The council could vote July 28.

Papas says the city is looking into whether it can charge different fees for residents and nonresidents. If so, fire and vehicle extraction fees would apply to everyone, but only nonresidents would pay to have accidents investigated.

Papas says the fees could bring in an extra $100,000 per year for the city facing a $4.5 million deficit.

Screed ahead.

If our economy/society is in such shambles that we can’t provide basic rescue and protection services to ourselves based on a shared pool of resources, we have a problem.

And here is the problem we face in general. Since the 1980s, certain members of our society have been reaping the tremendous benefits of deregulation, while society itself is cracking under the weight of economic and structural disrepair that has happened with the abandonment of checks and balances on the free market.

Laissez faire economic policy is a dumb idea. The fairy tale that what is good for “the market” is good for the society is preposterous. The current crisis with foreclosures is a fantastic example. “The market” drove up prices and encouraged greedy and corrupt mortgage brokers to get home buyers/refinancers to sign on with loans they had no perceivable way of paying off.

Why would they do this? Huge, huge commission. The bigger the “sale,” the bigger the haul. Lack of oversight and regulation allowed this to continue on a grand scale. There were home buyers/refinancers who made greedy/bad decisions, but if you read the personal stories that have been reported, some were just outright deceived.

Conned. Conned because a lot of people were making a lot of money.

And what happens to the people who really profited on this? They lose a tiny percentage of their ghastly wealth? That’s hardly punishment for hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and the destruction that wreaks on neighborhoods.

But forget that. We could talk about deregulation of mining, all those cranes that keep crashing down and killing people, the airline industry.

Deregulation=no oversight. No oversight=no one to call you out on fraud.

And now we’re in a situation where a city in this great state, and this is a great state, is considering charging for basic rescue and protection.

Minnesota is not perfect, but we used to value our communities. We knew that in order to have a functional state with a good quality of life, you had to invest in the society. We are responsible for the quality of our communities and neighborhoods.

If there’s no money, raise taxes. Forget this “fee-based” Republican crap. We are a society. We stand together or else we will fall apart. Hardly any of us could afford as a single household to create the kind of life that we have when we combine our resources. It is beyond my personal comprehension that people can ignore this simple fact.

I could scream right now, I’m so frustrated. Our physical infrastructure is disintegrating, and now our rescue/protection infrastructure is something we might have to consider the cost of the charges against the benefits of getting help.

Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Raise the damned income tax. Taxes are your obligation to the society in which you live.

Know what’s worse than taxes? A society where no one is accountable. Make people pay for rescue/protection services and some will opt out. You’d better hope those people don’t live next door to you if it happens.

We’re coming up here on one year. And by “we” and “one year,” I mean Megan and I are coming up on our one year anniversary.

It’s a big deal for me. Maintaining relationships has never been one of my greatest skills. I am, at my core, a frenetic girl. Warp speed brain, distracted, self-involved. As one of my friends (who I won’t name because he’s all “I want my privacy”) and I have discussed in the past, dating is hard for creative types like the two of us because the blank slate is all possibility and we can write such interesting tragedies.

And, c’mon, who doesn’t like a good passionate tragedy?

It has struck me over the last few months that movies/stories I once identified with (oddly enough, these stories are passionately tragic…) seem, well, kind of boring.

This kind of sustainable, non-tragic love has been good for me. I’ve mellowed a bit. Yeah, I’m still a ball of mental energy, but it’s not quite the same.

And so this is a public thank you to Megan:

• for humoring my need for text exhibitionism via Twitter et al and the blog and for the fact that she inevitably winds up with a presence there as well
• for being the ideal counterbalance to my spaced out, distracted mind
• for watching Countdown and appreciating Wonkette and introducing me to fantastic feminist blogs and consuming information and news at the same kind of rate that I do
• for being independent and stubborn and seemingly incapable of being steamrolled by my personality (no small feat, people)
• for understanding that anything I don’t know I must find out immediately, even if it means dragging my computer into bed to look up something on Wikipedia
• for being beautiful
• for making me a better person
• for all the things I can’t/don’t want to share on my little blog

This has been a year of being the happiest ever.