I think I'm having one of those days...

I've got a bit of a dilemma going here, and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

During the month I did not have a way to access the Internet at home, there were all kinds of things going in the world that I really wanted to write about. Important things. Things that have the capacity to impact the lives of everyone who lives in the United States and, often, even the lives of people elsewhere in the world.

Things like the Zimmerman trial, which turned out to be more along the lines of putting the live of Trayvon Martin, who is no longer here to defend himself, on trial. I also wanted to write about the related issue of how Rachel Jeantel, a witness in the trial, got raked over the coals and pretty much put on trial herself in the media, not so much for what she said as how she said it and what she looked like.

I wanted to write about the Supreme Court. One day they gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act 0f 1965, opening the door for outrageous abuses from the far reaches of the Republican party that could make it much easier to carry out their voter suppression schemes by enacting legislation in the states that could make it much harder for groups (the poor, college students, the elderly) that traditionally are more likely to vote Democratic, to exercise their right to vote. Then, the next day, the Court turned around and got it right for once, gutting the Defense of Marriage Act and throwing out California's Proposition 8, allowing same-sex couples, in California at least, to marry legally again after Prop. 8 had overturned that right, which had been granted by the California Supreme Court.

I wanted to write about the ongoing war against women in some state legislatures and even in Congress, where ultra-conservatives have been showing their willingness to sneak around and break the rules in order to try to pass restrictive legislation that limits women's right to abortion, sometimes their right to access birth control, and so forth. I also wanted to write about ancillary issues to this, such as the remarks in Texas, by a woman (a state legislator, if I recall correctly), who made comments indicating that pregnancy caused by rape shouldn't be an issue in relation to abortion because, she said, rape kits take care of that kind of thing, when in fact all a rape kit does is gather physical evidence that a rape has taken place. And, I wanted to write about Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator whose filibuster (the old-fashioned kind) kept one attempt at passing restrictive abortion legislation in Texas from succeeding, not to mention the continuing willingness of the governor of Texas (that would be Rick Perry, in case you'd forgotten) to expose himself as the horse's rear-end that he so obviously is in his comments regarding Senator Davis.

I wanted to write about the continued foot-dragging and, this week's knuckle-dragging (I'm looking at you, Representative Steve King of Iowa), surrounding the effort to pass a bill on immigration reform. King's comments implying that all but a very few illegal immigrants are drug mules, thankfully, even earned him condemnation from members of his own party, but just the fact that he felt comfortable making those comments is, well, dismaying to say the least.

There was so much that I wanted to write about all of that and more, so much that needs to be said, still. But most of it is so upsetting and depressing that I don't want to even think about any of it, much less write about it. Even the one hopeful thing in all that , the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage, managed to bring out the troglodytes who want to not just prevent same-sex couples from marrying but also want to regulate everyone's behavior in the bedroom, even that of straight married couples. Yes. You read that right. Virginia Attorney General and candidate for Governor of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli thinks it is a good idea to make pretty much any sex act that is not of the penis-in-vagina type a felony. This, from a member of the Republican party, members of which seem to always be crowing about how they belong to the party that wants to get government out of people's lives. As far as I can see, there isn't anything more intrusive in people's lives than wanting to police the intimate lives of consenting adults.

I feel like I should be writing about all of these issues, but every time I sit down to write about any of them in detail, I just...can't. I either get angry and start ranting (and if you read this blog with any regularity, you know I can get a pretty good rant going), or break into tears because it feels like I'm just pounding my head against a brick wall. So, instead, I end up posting video clips of prehistoric fish, like I did yesterday. Because, you know, I'd really rather be writing about cool stuff. Fun stuff. Stuff like prehistoric fish, like exploring our plant and the universe, like good books I've read and good movies I've seen and music I like. I'm having trouble finding a balance right now, and I'm finding that frustrating.

This will all work itself out and I'll find my direction - and a reasonable balance between writing about the things I want to write about and the things that I feel like I should write about. I'll find a way to articulate my thoughts about things going on in the world without ranting and without making myself crazy, and I'll find the time and space to write about the better stuff, too.

Until then, I'll try to make it interesting around here. For me, and for all of you, too.

Say WHAT?

So many idiots in the world.

First, there's Geraldo Rivera. Not that we haven't known for awhile that he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic and all. I had figured that out by the time he opened Al Capone's hidey hole and found precisely...nothing.

But now, Geraldo has decided in his great wisdom that the real reason George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin was that the boy was wearing a hoodie.

What the hell? That's right up there with, "That woman wouldn't have been raped if she hadn't been wearing...", or "That person wouldn't have been shot if they weren't wearing red [or blue, or some other color identified as a "gang color"].

Way to blame the victim, Geraldo. It couldn't have been because George Zimmerman appears to be a wanna-be cop who has bigotry issues, could it?

So, okay. We knew Geraldo was an idiot. But then I opened up Wikipedia (yeah, I know) and it's feature article of the day is all about something called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

What?

Yeah. Apparently this group was founded in 1991 and has as its goal convincing everyone in the world to quit having kids, so that human beings will become extinct so that that Earth can heal itself. Or something.

Well, good luck with that. It isn't going to happen. Still, I cannot even begin to fathom the amount of hate someone would have for themselves and their fellow human beings to propose that the best thing that could happen would be for the species to commit suicide.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that there are people who think this is a good idea, but somehow it does. There is, after all, PETA.

And Peter Singer, who thinks it's a good idea to kill babies who are disabled, and who disabled activists have accused of believing that the lives of disabled people are not worth as much as the lives of people who do not have a disability. Singer claims he is misunderstood, but I'm not so sure about that. An article from the UK Guardian in 2009 calls Singer an "intellectual heavyweight", whether or not one agrees with him. I'm even less sure about that. What he comes across to me as, is someone who thinks he should be able to make decisions about other people's lives based on his own prejudices rather than letting people make their own decisions about whether their lives are worth living or not.

In other words, another idiot, and one who has been able to gain fame while going around making shit up.

Sort of like Geraldo Rivera, come to think of it.