I have seen Twitter exploding over this for the last two days, and to be honest I had no idea what the hell it was about, other than it had something to do with abortion. In case you’re in the same boat as me, here are some links to get you started. Because while this is very, very disturbing stuff involving extreme medical malfeasance, abortion, and infanticide, if you can handle reading about it you should.
I’ve already seen it used several times as an argument for regulating abortion even more or making it illegal. On the contrary, I’d say it makes even more of a case for keeping abortion legal, and points to the hideous inequalities in healthcare faced by poor women.
Gosnell is (allegedly) a criminal. He’s on trial because what he (allegedly) did broke the law. Part of why he remained free for so long was because his victims were afraid to report due to their own part in these illegal late-term abortions. (So yeah, making more abortion illegal will surely put a stop to that problem.) But moreso, it was a hideous failure of the government that he was not stopped sooner. Hell, the only reason he was caught was because he was illegally prescribing drugs, not because he was destroying the health and lives of the women who resorted to his “care.”
Gosnell is the one on trial here, but the terrible inequalities that put these women in such an untenable position and the utter negligence of the government were what made his so-called “clinic” possible.
This is, without a doubt, the most brilliant piece of spam e-mail I have ever received. At least I’m assuming it’s spam. It’s from someone named Juan Barry (I don’t know anyone by that name) and is completely incoherent, in that special way you expect from spam. Yet there are no links, no attachments. Just beautiful, transcendent weirdness. Behold.
Subject: And Ive et worse pies
Juan Barry <xxxx@xxxxxxxx.com> Apr 10 (1 day ago)
to katsu
And so did I, Nor church? Nor church.
So it was? I noticed it.
Is it pure gibberish? Is it poetry? Is it a subtle attack on the Catholic church or perhaps the tax exempt status of American churches? (Nor church? Nor church.) No church can provide you comfort from bad pie, that much is clear.
Is the pie a metaphor? Is society, in fact, the pie? Has it gone moldy on the inside, and poor Juan feels alone in having noticed this, surrounded by a consumerist culture that urges us to eat and ear, when it’s all ultimately rotten and cannot be saved? (Perhaps not even by divine intervention.) And yet the implication that it could be worse! That he’s noticed it could be even worse, this downward spiral of ever worsening pies. We started at Marie Calendars and have backslid, through Village Inn, then Perkins, then down to Denny’s and we’re about to burn our collective mouths on the hot, fake filling of something evil awakening at McDonald’s.
Nor church? Nor church, Juan. Only we can save ourselves.
You all say the cake is a lie. Well, Juan Barry and I understand that the pie is worse.
Lorn Gorstorfsson stood at the parapet, eyes piercing the uneasy night from above a gnarled red beard in which a sparrow could easily become lost. Overhead, the Harvest Moon hung, fat and full; much fatter and fuller, he thought bitterly, than the actual harvest.
That was the price, he’d been told, for ignoring tradition for so many years. Traditions existed for a reason, even when they seemed nonsensical, or even silly. They’d kept the people of Tyrafyl safe for countless centuries. It was only in the reign of the most recent king that things had fallen by the wayside.
And what a terrible harvest had been reaped, for that time of inattention: floods, terrible storms, bad harvests, and all while the king engaged in debauchery, ignoring his closest advisors and taking shelter behind the supposed infallibility of the crown.
Well, Lorn thought to himself with grim amusement, the man hadn’t seemed all that infallible when he’d fallen down those three flights of stairs and onto a pike someone had left so carelessly propped against a table.
Someone. Oops.
Only now there was a vacuum of power at the top of the onyx steps that led to the throne. And while life was unpleasant enough for the peasants and even minor (if ambitious) nobility like Lorn, with belts tightening by the week, there was something about that massive, carved wooden throne. Everyone wanted to sit in it. Everyone thought they knew best.
Even Lorn himself. He had ideas, about defending the country, about expanding the borders to compensate for the harvests and bringing new lands into the kingdom. No one had listened to him seriously before now, but perhaps they would.
This had been his idea, for all he regretted it now. A return to the old ways to place himself in better attention, bring some light onto his rather convoluted bloodline. And that was why he found himself standing out on the walls, breath steaming in the air, boiled leather armor the only thing between him and freezing in the unseasonably cold autumn night.
By all rights, there should have been a storm, perhaps one of the great autumn blows where there was snow and purple lightning, crashes of thunder crackling through the ice riming the streams. But no, it was just cold, cold and calm, not a breeze stirring the bare branches of the palla trees.
From within the keep, an unholy howl rose, cat after cat raising its voice as if shrieking at the moon. The hairs on the back of Lorn’s neck stood, as did those on his sinewy arms, what few were left behind after the wash of dragon fire he’d taken as a young man.
Four times, the cats howled, once for each of the quarters. He’d read in the tomes of lore this would happen, but had not truly believed it. After all, this festival had not been observed in his lifetime.
The doors of the keep boomed hollowly, four measured strikes, someone indescribably ancient and powerful asking to be admitted.
Lorn licked his suddenly dry lips, smoothing his beard down with one hand. “Destarn River Keep bids you welcome!” he shouted. After a moment of hesitation the other sentries followed suit. “Open the doors!”
As two guards, their own boiled leather armor less impressed and adorned than his own, hurried to man the giant winches that would open the formal gates, the cats howled again. In the sky, the moon washed red. And in the inner court of the keep, somehow over the din he thought he could hear the soft weeping of those chosen. Girls, their curls adorned with thorns and holly, waited with their milk white backs bowed under massive stone serving platters.
There are a lot of things I wish someone else had told me about flying with cats. So here, I’ll tell you. Bookmark this shit. Spread it around.
There’s basically one and only one kind of pet carrier that you can get for this. They’re called Sherpas, and they’re pretty nice. Just buy them now and save yourself the looking.
Don’t put your cats in checked baggage. Just don’t. Ever.
Pick up their food 12 hours before, and their water about 6 hours before; or at least that’s what my vet recommended.
You may think you’ll be able to just sedate your cat. You’re wrong. While your vet will probably be willing to prescribe you something to calm your cat down, it’s not going to knock them out. Our vet gave us Xanax, which had the hilarious effect of making both of the cats stagger around like drunken, boneless frat boys. I recommend you be prepared to take some videos, because there is not much funnier than watching a cat fall off a windowsill.
Drugs make them easier to get into the cat carrier, but do not guarantee they’ll sleep, or even that they’ll be quiet. Even with half a milligram of Xanax aboard, Tengu was more than capable of airing every grievance he’d ever had, and loudly, in the plane cabin.
However, since the cats go under the seat and there’s a lot of background noise, not many people can actually hear them, which is the only saving grace. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll be on a flight with a baby and everyone will be too annoyed by that howling to notice the feline protests. So don’t worry too much about meowing. Constantly trying to talk to the cat is probably not going to make them any quieter and will annoy the people around you more (or at least the one weirdo not wearing headphones). Just do your best to ignore them.
I had people recommend Rescue Remedy to me. I took a look at it; it’s a homeopathic remedy with alcohol listed as its inactive ingredient. Maybe that’s what actually makes it work. Personally, I stuck with the Xanax.
For you personally, I’d recommend the application of two beers about an hour prior to your flight.
There’s another reason to want the cats to be on some kind of pharmaceutical to smooth them out. That’s because of:
THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT
We tried looking at the TSA website and even calling the airport ahead of time. They do not tell you this shit, and they should. It’s more excitement than I want to have at the airport.
You have to take your cat out of the carrier at security.
No, I am not joking. If you are smart, you will take the time before travel to get them used to a harness and then you can have them on a leash. (And hey, then you can take them for walks and let them frolic on the lawn later and it’ll be adorable.)
Not only do you have to take them out of the carrier, you have to carry a terrified animal through the metal detector, then basically sit on them for an extended period of time immediately on the other side. Where you will wait for someone to come swab your hands for – I don’t know, explosives? cat pee? catnip? – one at a time. Which means you need to have to be able to manage your cat one handed, because they will have to swab both of your hands.
Then you wait some more, sitting on your scruffed and upset cat, while the swab processes. You are not allowed to put the cat back into the carrier until you have the all clear. You’re not allowed to get assistance with keeping the cat from fleeing by anyone, except if you’re lucky, a friendly TSA agent who doesn’t have a good self-preservative instinct.
This is where drugging the cats paid off. I have no idea if they would have made more or less noise with the Xanax. But I know they sure as hell couldn’t fight me as much when I had to restrain them on the other side of the checkpoint.
Oh yeah, for bonus, you can’t wrap the cat in a blanket going through the metal detector. So make sure you trim their claws the night before if you possibly can. (And recall, you’re not allowed to wear a sweatshirt, coat, or shark suit either, so you’re SOL there.)
I really, really wish someone had told me this shit before I went through security.
This movie is not nearly as silly as I thought it would be.
Which is not to say that it isn’t silly. It is, wonderfully so. It’s an action movie where large portions of the White House get alternately shot up and blown up, and where they randomly make up super secret military technologies just to try to ratchet the stakes up an itty bitty bit more. Where the protagonist literally waits until the glowing red countdown until doomsday has reached 00:03 before entering the abort code.
See, if it was a truly silly movie, he would have waited until 00:01.
Ultimately, Olympus Has Fallen is like political Die Hard. Particularly the first movie, when it was a bit grittier and darker and slightly less quippy. And this one is less quippy than your average Die Hard. And since the protagonist is special forces instead of a cop, he stabs people in the brain and snaps necks instead of shooting and punching.
The thing I liked most about the movie, actually, is that a few major plot points actually surprised me. I won’t spoil those for you, but I really liked it.
Gerard Butler is excellent as the aforementioned neck-snapping brain-stabbing special forces secret service guy. Morgan Freeman was very Morgan Freeman, as you’d expect from him. I wish the real Speaker of the House was even a thousandth that awesome. And I’d like to give a special shout-out to Melissa Leo as the most badass Secretary of Defense ever seen in a movie.
I’d definitely recommend this one if you like action movies.
Points 1-7 even have citations! Citations! To journal articles!
Anyway, there are two points that I just want to highlight:
3. There is No Perfect Diet For Everyone
Bottom Line: The best diet for YOU is the one you get results with and that you can stick to in the long term.
and
9. “Diets” Don’t Work, a Lifestyle Change is Necessary
Bottom Line: Adopting a healthy lifestyle is the only way to ensure long term weight loss and a lifetime of improved health.
These are the things that have really been driven home to me over the last three years and my own continuing adventure in weight loss. People tend to push particular diets, because they’re fads, because they’re trying to sell you something, or often even just because it’s worked well for them so they think it should be a cure-all. It never is. You have to find a mix of foods that work for you to keep you fueled and healthy.
And more importantly, you have to find that mix that you can sustain and live with. It’s easy to go on a diet and make yourself eat shit you hate for like maybe a month, and then it’s all over. You have to like what you’re doing, or it’ll never work. You have to do changes that you can stick with permanently and be happy.
Because if it’s not making you happy (in the long run, there will always be fucking miserable days) then why the hell are you doing it?
Since I’m going to be flying to Houston with the cats on Thursday, I went to the vet and asked for some kind of sedative for the poor guys. He prescribed Xanax, and suggested that we test it out on them a few days early, just to see if the dose was right and make sure my pilling technique was up to par. I managed to get the pills into the cats without any blood being spilled, and fifteen minutes later, things started getting a little silly.
They didn’t lay down and fall asleep. They just became incredibly uncoordinated and playful. Tengu got fixated on a hook hanging from the ceiling and we had to put him in his cat carrier because we were worried he’d hurt himself, trying to jump for it. It also made Loki release so absolutely choking cat farts. They should put that on the warning label. Well, I guess that’s the feline equivalent of being “loosened up.” Here’s hoping that’ll equate to less shrieking on the airplane.
The cats are still waddling around like drunken frat boys even now.
Well, I’ve let this show build up in my Hulu queue, and I seem to have run out of Bones, Castle, Supernatural, Law and Order: SVU, and even Project Runway reruns. Guess it’s time to clear it out. (I will note, however, I’m still watching this before Grimm. So, Grimm, you should think long and hard about what you’ve been doing with your life.)
Not a liveblog as such. Just the horrible things I think at this show as I’m watching it. Why am I still watching it?
Episode 5:
And we start episode 5 right off with the serial killer threesome in bed. Well, I guess they know what I’m in it for. (Though I have to say, as weird as this sounds, I appreciate it being a two guys and a girl threesome. That makes it very clearly not the typical male fantasy bait.) It’s such a bizarre mix, to have Paul talking killing technique with Jacob one moment, and then trying to calm him down out of a freakout about how he’s not gay in the next. (And I have to say, “Last night is exactly what it needed to be, why do you have to worry about labels?” is a pretty good line from the psychotic murderer guy.)
The greatest trick of this show is making the killers the most human and interesting characters.
Though man, the psychotic babysitter crew are the worst imaginable at keeping an eye on where the kid is at.
I find it so, so very funny that Jacob can’t bring himself to kill the woman in the basement, and that he’s upset about it.
But hey, time to go murder the neighbors!
Another weird thing – despite the fact we’ve seen Emma kill a bunch of people, I still worried about her a little when someone was in the house. But it’s okay. More serial killer brethren to evacuate her and the kidnapped kid. But it’ll break up the threesome and that’s very sad.
Even worse – I want them to escape the law. Because hey, they’re the only characters I even like.
I do not get why the lawyer would work for Carroll after he’s had two of her fingers cut off. I mean, I would get it if it was someone she loved under threat, but if it was her, why the hell wouldn’t she go to the cops? And I assume people have noticed and asked her how this happened. It’s gross and disturbing but makes no sense at all.
Episode 6:
Hardy and Paul arguing about who is going to kill who while Jacob wets his pants in apparent fear over the thought of having to kill someone is sort of a beautiful moment. And suddenly I’m reminded of why I loved Agent Angsty McAlcoholic, because this is the most life Kevin Bacon’s gotten to show in ages. It’s beautiful.
Oh Hardy, you gravelly badass. You’re so much more awesome when you have nothing left to lose.
And in case you forgot, Emma wears the pants of this evil little family.
Oh whoops, Hardy forgot about poor Megan. Like everyone else in this series, and the audience. Poor Megan.
Wow really, talk to Emma about her mom? About the lady she stabbed because she insulted Emma’s haircut? Really?
Apparently the FBI agent lady was in a cult growing up. These flashbacks would have more impact if I actually gave a crap about her, I’m sure.
GOD PAUL FIRST YOU WANT JACOB TO KILL MEGAN THEN YOU WON’T LET HIM STRANGLE HER MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
Oh look. Another surprise Follower. Blah blah blah. Poor Paul though. Guess stabbing isn’t nearly so much fun when you’re on the receiving end.
Aaaaaand even more Followers in the FBI. Whee. Look, I know it’s a plot device that’s supposed to engender paranoia because now they never know who they can trust, but for goodness sake apparently 90% of the population is in this cult.
Aw, poor Jacob and Paul. Emma just ditched them. Though she seems upset she did it. I am so incredibly sad my favorite threesome of evil has broken up. I hope it’s only temporary.
Episode 7:
Well, guess I’m glad to know the cult isn’t all unified. I want Emma to kick the ugly guy’s butt, though. I admit it. I’m an Emma fangirl. She’s my favorite mass-murdering psychopath and god I feel gross for having typed that sentence.
Hardy, that’s not an edit. I’m pretty sure that’s a piece of paper. But it does show evidence of an edit. And a bad editor.
Carroll escaped. No one is surprised. Seriously, the guy already had to of the lawyer’s fingers cut off. How did she not think he was going to kill her?
Oh look. More random killers. Though I have to say, the woman with the razor has some class. Louise.
Not your smartest move, Hardy. It’s always sad when someone gets threatened with their own gun. Even more sad when said gun has been taken from them after having their arm slammed repeatedly in a door.
Why is every psychotic villain an emotionally needy theater major under it all? Such monologing.
Ah, I think we’re going for the obvious point where Hardy’s pursuit of a sadistic monster is turning him into something monstrous perhaps? Or at least I hope so. Because gosh.
I will say this for the episode. This is a pretty awesome song:
For the, you know, now standard musical ending number. (I remember back in the day when ER started doing this kind of thing and I thought it was relentlessly cheesy. Some shows do it well, like Supernatural – probably because there’s already so much vocal music woven into the show – but it just feels weird to me in this one.)
Episode 8:
Gosh Carroll I don’t know why your kid would be scared of you at all. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re intensely creepy? “I have the ability to be a rather cool and fun guy?” Seriously? You’re an evil mastermind and this is the best you can come up with?
I believe what you mean is that, “He flew away in a helicopter and then dropped leaflets over a city block that all said TROLOLOLOL BITCHEZ NEVERMORE.
Oh. The hardass new guy FBI agent plot. Whee.
Aw. Emma is worried about Paul and Jacob. But apparently not worried enough that it’ll stop her from hitting on the boss. Who says no because he loves his wife. (…well okay then.)
I did not expect the mysterious Roderick to be a sheriff with a southern accent. Aw. Murderers are such a happy family of huggy bears.
I am amused that one of the evil cult members if a former Blackwater operative. (Louise, the cool lady with the razorblade.)
Well, I’m glad at least Mike isn’t a secret serial killer. Kind of weird torture method they got going there. Woo fist fight!
Way to come in with guns blazing, Hardy. Maybe you should have done that before poor little Mike got stabbed. Aw, sad. Man, these guys shoot like stormtroopers and the rounds spark like blaster rounds. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Tender string music, golden, flickering firelight, two men embracing over a plastic sheet, one gasping… what a beautiful murder scene.
And then all the murderers got laid and Hardy sat in a hospital and felt sorry for himself the end.
Episode 9:
Apparently we’re starting this episode off with a review of how creepy Carroll is.
Aaaand no one tries to stop the woman that just shot someone with a spearfishing gun. I mean, shock and everything, I get, but she just walks calmly out with Louise. What the hell are they putting in the water in this city?
Wow. Jacob’s mom is sure… accepting.
YES MOM HIS SHAMEFUL SECRET HE NEVER KILLED ANYONE. Oh Jacob.
They just keep making up more and more flashbacks. Which feel like they don’t entirely work with the previous sets of flashbacks.
Aw, Paul loves Jacob. And gets to be the first person Jacob kills. Why are all the best, most emotional scenes in this show between the murderers? I feel like I could write a thesis on this. And incredibly creepy, fucked-up thesis.
I CAN’T HEAR THE MURDER THE MUSIC AT THIS PARTY IS TOO LOUD.
Wow, Hardy. “I will shoot you dead.” “I don’t think you have the–” BANG. This man is done fucking around. I bet Louise was wearing a vest though.
So Jacob is back. I’m sure this won’t be awkward at all.
Episode 10:
Geeze, Jacob smothers one person and he’s already losing it.
Yes. Not awkward at all with Emma. Not. Awkward. At. All.
I am charmed to see they’re playing up how much getting shot in a bullet proof vest hurts.
Being asked by the boss to forgive Emma after he slept with her? So not awkward. Your (no homo) gay lover, murdered by you, showing up as a hallucination to tell you what your subconscious thinks of Emma deserting you both? Also totally not awkward.
So they know the evil killer people are coming but now is a good time for a relationship talk?
Aw, and now the hallucination of Paul is going to watch Jacob get busy with Emma. Also not awkward. Well Jacob, at least in your fantasies you’re an awesome stabby murderer.
Aaaand then some other stuff happened but I kind of didn’t care any more because I took Nyquil. I have lost my murderous threesome and therefore my motivation.
I had a minor nerd explosion this morning over Iron Man 3. Let me explain why. I’m going to go ahead and put this under a cut (…hopefully that works for LJ/DW) because if you’ve buried yourself in a box and are avoiding everything to do with the movie (including trailers and TV spots) then this is, very technically a spoiler. But seriously. It’s in a TV spot.