No, really, I'm not dead. No, really!

Seriously, I'm totally not dead.  Okay?  Good.

NaNoWriMo is a bust, not because I couldn't have done it, but because I couldn't do it with swine flu + work craziness + Thanksgiving.  Whatever!  I got halfway through.  Not bad in half the time.

I will soon be a Mac user at home.  I have very, very conflicted feelings about it.

Happy feelings:

- SO pretty!  I've always been really impressed with the overall design of Macs, as well as the ways in which the applications in the operating system match so well.  So sue me.  The aluminum body and glass trackpad and screen are gorgeous, too.

- I didn't realize that there would be a way to activate right-clicking; I am so excited because I thought I had to give it up.

- If it's broken, I take it to an Apple Store.  Easy.  No way am I bringing it back to the repair shop, the one that failed to fix my laptop.

- I know everyone's going on about 7, but I'm an XP person, and I don't want 7.  Sure, I've never tried it, but look at you being really nice and not judging me.

- I'm looking forward to the desktop, and the ways in which I can create storage spaces (folders, etc.) without cluttering the desktop.

- Since there IS no low-end Mac, even though they're pricey, I know I'm getting a well-made computer that'll last me a very long time.  I just heard from a reliable source that HP ranked number 1 in computers that would crap out three days after you buy one.

Unhappy feelings:

- One of the innovative designs for Mac?  No mouse buttons (either on a trackpad or on their new Magic Mouse).  They're really proud of that.  I am displeased; I've had trackpad tapping turned off ever since I got my first laptop about 4.5 years ago.

- Kosher Beef has pointed out some ways in which Apple, as a company, kind of blows.  He put it in a very, very true way: Microsoft is slimy, but they sort of acknowledge their sliminess.  Mac's all, "Oh, we're happy and shiny, and we're all about YOU and the environment!  We're not slimy!"  But they ARE slimy; all this mess with apps being rejected, for example, is slimy.

- Kosher Beef's other excellent point: Mac operating systems only work on Macs, whereas other OSs work on multiple kinds of machines.  That seems kind of weird to me.  After all, Windows works on Macs.  Come on, return the favor. You will still make money.

- I spent $500 trying to fix a $1000 computer that's not quite 2 years old.  What a waste.  And my HP is very pretty, too.

- Loki is not going to ever, ever understand that this is a pretty new computer, and he cannot sit on it, poop on it, molt on it, or scratch it.  Essentially, birdeh is going to have to learn NOT to go on the computer.  He didn't learn it before; I doubt he will now.  Ugh.

- Macs are sort of advertised as ridiculously easy to use for people who have trouble with computers.  First off, that's bull, because my grandmother had to switch back to PC.  Second of all, with the exception of my second laptop fucking itself over into non-workingness, I'm not terrible with computers; I've been using my 4.5 year old lappy for months now with no problem.  I just such at torrents and illegal fun stuff, is all.

And last but not least (perhaps it's most):

I hate, hate, hate commercials for Macs.  Hate them.  They are not funny.  They are smug.  They are pointless: why are there two white men talking about how different they are?!  I kind of want to write to Apple and be like, "I bought a computer from you because it's my way of paying you to take these commercials off the air, thanks."  UGH.

I should get my external hard drive (and free printer with rebate!) this week, and the computer sometime next week (I just don't want it to arrive on Saturday because it's being shipped to the Institute; everything is because no one's home to sign for it).  Once I get the external, I'm going to begin the long, involved, painful process of making sure I get everything off of my dead computer.  Just in case I find my Vista disk when I clean my room this weekend, I need to get everything safe.  If Vista fixes all of the problems I was having ... well, then I have a nice, small, portable PC lappy which I can take places, as well as a second back-up for when my clunky lappy back-up farts out.

Then I'll get the rest of my stuff off of clunky lappy and make sure I've got everything.  Then I can cancel GeekSquad online back-up, which I got on shiny PC lappy when I realized it might die; the lappy wouldn't stay on long enough for everything to get backed up, and the back up would often make it crash.  Interesting.

And then gorgeous new Macbook Pro lappy will arrive, and I will install a twitter application and Pidgin and Firefox, and then make sure everything is all nice and clean, and then I'll begin the long and involved and painful process of getting all of my important crap onto the new lappy.  I'll leave some things behind on the external, but I've got a lot of docs and music.

Phew.  I wonder what work I need to do today?

I LIVE!! Sort of!

After surviving teh Hamthrax, I went back to work. And then work smacked me in the face a bit and sucked out my sweet, sweet life force. Needless to say, it was a trying week.

Right now, I'm working on a massive project, if anyone's interested. Head over to Voices, Not Violence for more information: we're making a 101 site for sexual violence information. If you want to help, head over there for info, and if you don't want to help ... why WOULDN'T you want to help provide people with information about sexual violence?

I'm supposed to clean up my messes in the apartment tonight because my roommate's parents are visiting. But I'm so totes exhausted, I feel like it won't happen. And then I know it has to.

And then getting up early-ish to get to the bank and the lab. FUN.

I LIVE!

When I got a mild sore throat Friday night, I was sure I was getting a cold. And I wasn't worried; it was the same cold I've had a million times before.

Except that by Saturday night, I had a low fever, and by Sunday morning, I couldn't get out of bed (by that evening, my fever hit 101, as well). My fever broke Tuesday night, though, and today, I'm back at work, feeling fine but for a cough.

It seems highly, highly likely that I had H1N1. I survived TEH HAMTHRAX!

Sports are for men, obviously!

I went to a Celtics game with my brother last night (home opener). For reasons that will go unsaid here, the game wasn't exactly fun.

And of course, the Celtics Dancers were there to entertain us. Yay. I just love going to sporting events, where I get to see men play sports, and then during time-outs, I get to watch women dance for our entertainment. As a straight, overweight, feminist woman, I always love it when women's bodies are sexualized, objectified, and used specifically to please the spectators of a completely unrelated event. Mmhmm.

Living Godwin's Law

Today, while I was walking from the West End BPL branch to Whole Foods, a woman in the sidewalk blocked my path. She was holding a poster with Obama's face on it, and with Hitler's iconic mustache scribbled on. "Excuse me, what do you think of Obama's mustache?" she asked me.

"It's pretty offensive," I replied as I stepped away and continued on my path. But then I stopped and realized, "No, that's not enough of how I feel about it." And so I turned around and called out to her, intent on making it clear that it wasn't that I was a commie liberal (although I totally am, and completely proud of it); it was that I'm Jewish.

Of course, she pointedly ignored me, even when I was inches away from her. I should have known that would be her tactic, to avoid doing anything except offend the residents of the city of Boston.

I've been feeling angry and violated the whole rest of the day, so far. And for several reasons.

- By refusing to acknowledge me, because I said I found the poster offensive, this woman made it clear that she's not interested in discussion. She's not interested in talking about the issues. Again, she's not even interested in recognizing that anyone who disagrees with her has anything legitimate to say. Anyone who disagrees with her is less-than, and can be ignored as an inconsequential, unimportant, worthless person.

- I did not choose to engage with her at any point in time; she stood in my path and insisted, physically and verbally, that I engage with her. It is quite rude and unacceptable to push yourself in someone's face, interrupt them as they are going about their lives, accost strangers whom you do not know, with the actual hope that you might offend them. It is even worse to do so and then pointedly refuse to let the person engage on their on terms.

- There are several family members that I never met, and several more that never existed, because of Adolf Hitler. I'm not alone (certainly, my family didn't fare NEARLY as badly as many other families, no question), and Jews are not alone. And what that means is that whatever the point of the Obama-Hitler posters (apparently, if you can't use logic and reason to validate your angry feelings against someone, you just draw on the mustache!), the main result is that you harass, offend, hurt, and trigger many, many, MANY people who either survived the Holocaust, lost family members or friends, or simply belong to one of the groups that was deemed undesireable, that Hitler tried to eradicate. How the fuck does that achieve anything?

Either way, I'm still livid. I'm even more livid that this woman is probably very happy that she got a reaction out of me (damn commie liberals, right?), and she probably sleeps very well at night believing that she's helping a good cause. And even worse, she's one of many; she's not the root of any problem, just the offshoot that I had to deal with.

When things like this happen, there's not much I can do about it. I'm obviously going to keep standing up for my rights. I'm obviously going to keep talking about this incident to remind people that regardless of whether you agree with someone policies, you don't have the right to harass people. And I'm going to keep being a liberal commie super-feminist. This person may have succeeded in her completely pointless and questionably-ethical plan to piss me off, but she also succeeded in just making me more dedicated to CRUSHING EVERYONE LIKE HER BWAHAHAHAHA!

So, good job, evil Nazi-poster asshole.

(Godwin's Law, originally referring to internet discussions, states that as a discussion or argument continues on and on, and gets longer and longer, eventually, someone will make a comparison to Hitler/Nazism, regardless of whether or not said comparison is legitimate.)

Smokers and Fatties: A Comparison

Recently, I've noticed a trend that I find both fascinating and pretty weird: people like to compare smoking to obesity.

In many ways, I think you can make some accurate comparison. In many ways, I think you can't. And it seems as if a lot of people can't seem to process that two DIFFERENT things can be SIMILAR in some ways, but DIFFERENT in others. Again, if there were no differences between smoking and obesity, they wouldn't be two distinct things; they would be smobesity. Duh.

So, I'm going to talk about it. Obviously. Besides, it's been bugging me for a while.

One thing that's very similar between obesity and smoking is that both are states of being (being fattie mcfatterson and being smokey mcsmokerson) that are very, very difficult to change. How many people do you know, or have you heard of, you have tried to quit smoking a million times? If you smoke, have you tried to quit? Was it easy?

Same with being overweight. I'd love to get some data on how many overweight/formerly overweight people think that losing weight is easy, and how many never-been-overweight people think so. How many people do you know who are on some kind of diet? Are trying to lose those last 10 lbs? Just can't seem to? Have tried every method in the book?

I've never smoked, but I've tried to lose weight. I've been trying to lose weight ever since I was 13 and didn't need to; 60 lbs later and 0 inches taller, I'm even more unhappy with my inability to shed pounds. It's difficult, it's expensive, and people are ridiculously judgmental about it, especially when I relapse. Which I inevitably will; ask anyone who's tried to lose weight or fight an addiction.

And I think that's a major similarity.

However, there are plenty of things about smoking and obesity that really aren't similar at all. First off, who ARE these people who think that obesity is something that people choose to be? Seriously, people who keep saying, "OMG just put down the donut and go for a run!" I've got some news for you: I don't eat donuts. And I run more than you do. And yet I'm still fat. GOOD JOB. I didn't choose to be fat; it's not as if I go through three packs of cookies a day while my comrades the smokers are going through packs of cigarettes instead.

Then there's the whole OMG YOUR HEALTH! Guess what? OMG MY HEALTH IS FINE. I don't have diabetes. I don't have high blood pressure (I will when I'm older because it runs in my family; my mother eats nothing but veggies and runs every day, and she has high BP). In fact, the only health problems I have that have anything to do with my weight are the CAUSE of weight issues, not the effect; ulcerative colitis is not caused by being fat, but it sure makes me lose weight, and PCOS is not caused by being fat, but man, does it keep me fat with no effort.

My health is FINE. Go pay attention to yours.

Then there's the whole "Tax cigarettes and tax junk food!" Both are not very bright (I say tax alcohol, honestly). Taxing cigarettes punishes people for having an addiction; it does not actually help many people quit. The way to help people quit? Better drug prevention programming and more accessible and less expensive methods to help people quit. There is no RIGHT way to quit smoking, and taxing cigarettes punishes everyone who has trouble quitting without aid.

And taxing junk food punishes people by class, not by weight, although I don't think either group should be punished.

Weight is a class issue; the wealthier you are, the higher the chances that you'll have time to exercise, or that you'll have a great gym membership, or that you'll have a personal trainer, or that you'll have exercise equipment in your home. Or that you can even afford things like running shoes. The wealthier you are, the higher the chances that you can buy plenty of healthy foods that you enjoy, that you'll have time (or hired help) to cook those foods, the more regular your schedule is so that you can plan your meals.

The less wealthy you are, the higher the chances that you're working more than one job, that you can't afford a gym membership, that you can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. Interesting.

The thing is, if you smoke, you're likely to become addicted to cigarettes. If you become addicted, or you magically don't but still smoke on a regular basis, you are highly likely to compromise your cardiovascular health.

If you're overweight, it doesn't mean very much. Many of us have high BMIs but aren't actually overweight or obese; BMI is one of the least scientific things ever invented, falling slightly behind organized religion and Santa Claus. BMI aside, plenty of overweight people, obese or not, are actually quite happy with their bodies, or they would be if people would stop WHINING about it. And plenty of overweight people (HI, folks) are quite healthy, or their health problems are unrelated to their weight, or their health problems even cause their weight to change in a specific way. Plenty of overweight people eat healthy foods and avoid unhealthy ones, and plenty of overweight people exercise. So where is all this bullshit, "OMG obesity is killing everyone!" crap coming from?

Look, smoking is a choice, albeit one that is often influenced by peer pressure, and one that's often hard to take back once you've made it. And in the majority of cases, being overweight is not a choice. In both cases, making change is difficult, not because of laziness, but because of what it means to be addicted to cigarettes, or what causes a person to be overweight.

So, I've had enough of all this, "Let's tax smokers and fatties!" No, let's all fuck off.

Exciting Peanut Butter Experience!

A few nights ago, I was eating a Special K protein bar, which is not unusual in any way. I've been eating them on a regular basis for month, and Kellogg's has been steadily draining me of my money for that reason (but they're cheaper than the protein shakes!). So you can imagine my surprise when I was reading the wrapper for what probably shouldn't have been the first time, and I saw the words "peanut flour."

"This has to be one of those 'may contain traces' things," I thought to myself. After all, I can usually taste an allergy-food even in small quantities, and I hadn't tasted ANYTHING remotely suspicious in these bars. So I looked to the allergen warning, and lo and behold, I was wrong. And not only did it contain peanut material, but also plain old nut! My eyes flicked to the ingredients list again, and sure enough, "almond flour" sat there, laughing at me.

So, how the fuck was I able to eat these foods for months with no symptoms at all? While I've been illness-free for a year now (see Anniversary post for more info on my illness and not-exactly-allergies), I figured that part of my amazing streak of not-dying was related to my will power and ability to convince myself that, no, I did not want to test to see if I would swell up like a balloon if I ate peanut butter.

Maybe, I thought, it was because there wasn't that much peanut or almond flour in the protein bar; after all, the predominant components seem to be delicious chocolate and those rice crisps. But I'm a scientist, so obviously, I have to test this out.

So yesterday, on my way home, I bought a two-pack of "giant" Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I ate them on the train. Nothing happened, not on the train, not on the way home, and not at any point that night. Even now, nothing.

Also, peanut butter tastes just as amazingly as it did when I last had it two years ago. OMG.

So, I'm throwing caution to the wind and buying Honey Nut Cheerios and Peanut Butter M&Ms this weekend. If I get sick, I'll throw them out, but if I CAN eat them, then man, do I want to. TASTES SO GOOD.