If You Ever Thought My Reasons for Disliking Macs Wasn’t Justified…

Hope you had a great holiday. Most likely you got a gift or two, and there’s also a good chance one of your gifts may have been an Apple product. My dad got me an iTunes gift card. It was sweet, but I have a problem with it. Not a moral or ethical problem. A legitimate this won’t work problem.

iTunes kept bugging me to download the new version, and I kept putting it off. Eventually I decided “Fine. I’ll download you, even though you probably aren’t much different from the version I have now.” Boy, was I wrong. After it installed, a message popped up to say that I can’t use the new iTunes store because I don’t have the new version of Safari. So I clicked the little link to download the new Safari, and then another error message popped up to say that I couldn’t download the new version of Safari because I don’t have the new OS leopard.

Why the FUCK would Apple have me download the new version of iTunes and NOT write a simple program to detect my platform BEFORE I download the new iTunes? It didn’t even have a disclaimer to say that I would need Leopard in order to use the iTunes store. You’re just asking me to torrent music, Apple. It’s not a difficult problem to solve. If your software can tell me I don’t have the write operating system, you can easily write a program that can figure that out before I download it. Don’t be such a fucking dumbass and write a fucking program that can determine a computer’s platform before installing your software. Idiots.

Found Myself Some Culprits

I know, I know. I’m crazy for thinking that abortion should be covered by a public option. But I recently came across Bart Stupak’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, and it just makes me angry again. I understand that you don’t think it’s anything different or new – abortion already isn’t covered by federal tax dollars. But if it isn’t anything new, then why did you feel a need to do it?

I agree with abortion rights supporters who say “the amendment was the biggest setback to their cause in decades.” I just don’t see a reason for it. I don’t understand why the U.S. does not recognize public access to safe abortions as a woman’s right, a health right, and an economic right. I guess because the U.S. hasn’t been good at recognizing any of those forms of human rights.

AND another thing: why is anyone who earns less than $100,000/year a republican? Why are people denying themselves their own rights? I believe that ethics and morals apply to economic, social, and political issues, but seriously. And don’t you remember this bill by Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro? What happened to good teamwork?

Bird in a Cage

Two things I want to talk about. First, if you’re interested in being an art student, here is my critical piece of advice: stick to your guns and fight for your work. Today we were supposed to have a final showing of our thesis work before the winter break. It was emphasized that the work should be as final as possible. But when we arrived and displayed, the professors (one in particular) seemed to treat it as another crit.

After all the work we’ve put into this project, you expect us to make such drastic changes that you’re suggesting? I realized that this was (unintentionally) a real challenge to our art. Can we defend it? Can we stand by it? Because everyone’s a critic. Everyone has an idea of what direction your work should take, and how it speaks to an audience. In the end, you can’t make everyone happy, and you can’t change your work based on multiple opinions. I wish someone had hammered this into my brain when I started art school. And that’s my two cents.

My second bit is about my desire to leave NYC and be my own woman. I feel this has come into question more often because of my impending graduation. I have loved NYC with all my heart, but it’s time for me to move on. New York has stopped inspiring me. I want to do so many things and go so many places, and I can’t have anything or anyone hold me down. I can’t have someone or something tell me where to go or who to be or what to do. I want to live in Seattle. Maybe I want to try living in Canada, too. I want to work with numerous organizations and film festivals. I want to live in the Bay Area again.

But there are so many people I love here. I have connections here. I have a sweet apartment here. And if I leave, I can never have any of it again. NYC will replace me and forget me like yesterday’s headlines. There are so many people who want what I have, and I can’t decide if I’m willing to let it go.

But I’m tired of feeling like I can’t be who I want to be. If NYC doesn’t like me, it’ll chew me up and tear me apart. There are times here when I feel I can’t be an activist and an educator and a photographer and a baker and anything else I want to be. And it is at those times that I realize again that I can be all of those things, but New York will not let me happy that way. And I know there are people who are all of those things and more here. But NYC wants me to be a New Yorker or get the fuck out, and that’s not who I am. I don’t want to be a New Yorker. I want to be me, and most importantly, I want to be happy.

Decisions, decisions. I have to make dinner now.

Save It For A Rainy Day

Originally I was going to post about abortion and the public option, but I realized I ranted about that a couple posts ago. Instead I want to talk about a conversation I had with a manfriend of mine.

He goes to West Point and studies economics, so already this is a difficult argument for me to have. (Really smart people get me every time.) We were talking about public school funding, and I asked why doesn’t the government put money into schools in middle- and low-income areas, instead of prisons. His response, while he says he doesn’t necessarily agree with it, was that there is a greater return on schools in high-income areas and building the prisons.

That makes me physically ill. That can’t possibly be true. Is it really more sustainable to put people in prison rather than educate them? I’ve heard the arguments about education being a “white” thing; people in middle- and low-income areas don’t value education as much; and money that has been invested in middle- and low-income schools has not had a great return.

I say it’s a load of crap. It’s like people who argue that human rights are a “Western” idea. You don’t think non-Western people have a concept of what is right and what is wrong? Saying that not investing in some people is economical is wrong. It just can’t be true. I can’t believe that putting money into prisons is better in the long run than investing in schools.

And to be completely honest, can someone please show me studies on this? I want to know how people justify this.

How Can You Have Everything And Nothing To Lose

I have lots of things I’ve been meaning to say this week, but I’ve slept through my alarm almost every day. I need some time to recover, to get back in the thick of it, complete my thesis, and then chill the fuck out.

Someday there will be more written here, and much more eloquently. I’ll shut up now!

My Troubling Ways

Here’s the thing about universal health care: it’s universal. Last time I checked, universal meant “including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception; especially : available equitably to all members of a society.” I understand that to mean that there is no discrimination, which means all people – including women – are covered under a universal health care system, which means abortions are covered under a universal health care system.

Why? Because it falls under health issues. And last time I checked, abortions are legal (in the majority of states). If abortions are covered under universal health care, it doesn’t mean hundreds of thousands of women will suddenly choose abortions over carrying the baby to term. It doesn’t mean that women will be aborting their fetuses for gits and shiggles. It means women can have access to affordable, safe abortions if they choose to do so. And to be honest, you’re paying for them if not through a federal universal health care system, then through taxes for E.R.s.

And since when was it your duty to tell these women what they can and can’t do? And when did it become OK to use women’s rights as a bargaining chip? Abortions are legal. They should be covered under universal health care. We’re talking about the law, not arbitrary definitions of life. I don’t understand what the problem is here.