thanks, customs

xmas presents still not here, apologies given to friends/family who are lacking in presents...

£13.60 customs charge for holding up my parcel for 2 weeks, because the obvious reason someone would buy 7 different sized/styled/gendered tshirts to arrive BEFORE xmas is that they are selling t shirts for profitzzzz. ye.

i paid extra for quick delivery, A MONTH AGO.

crash

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8203120.stm

there's this video that's been making the rounds on youtube about texting and driving, and if i were not far too nervous a driver to even attempt texting whilst driving then it would have deffo put me off this one!

it's a lot grim

but worth a watch.

on the bnp

heavy i know.

there is some dude on the telly that thinks you can't have a dialogue with the bnp, because

"they say the holocaust didn't happen, what are you gunna say, 'yes it did?'" uh YES that's exactly what you say. you don't resort to throwing eggs at people, or denying people who will vote for them the right to vote.

you take their manifesto, and you go through it, point by point if necessary, and you demonstrate the enormous holes in their arguments. ITS NOT HARD, PEOPLE, THIS PARTY ARE IDIOTS!

the rest of us are better than this, we don't need to be throwing eggs at people or not allowing them to speak. 10% of people in some places gave the bnp their votes. those people are real. you can't take away someones democratic right because you disagree with them, no matter how disgusting you find their ideas. we can't and shouldn't silence them, in time the bnp will expose themselves as the horrible, illogical and wrong people they are, and people need to see it.

and in time, they will.

some schools are disgusting

a bunch of schools in the states told 20 odd classes of teens that selected classmates were dead.

"OCEANSIDE, Calif. - On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving."

having recently witnessed the horribly sad event that happened locally, in which a 16 year old boy was hit by a careless driver and killed instantly.. and thereafter seen the group mourn together for weeks at the scene of the accident i've been witnessing the pain felt by schoolkids at the loss of one of their own. it's big and it's emotional and its really moving to see them all band together around their friend.

i wouldn't know if teens feel react and respond differently about tragedy in their circles of friends to adults, but what i do know is how disgusting it is to fuck with them like that.

"At school assemblies, some students held up posters that read: "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions.""

good afternoon... rant

it's really sad i feel the need to rant about this today, the whole thing just makes me kinda blue. but still, rant i must.

i checked facebook today to find todays sponsored link a '1 in 3 rapes happen when the victim has been drinking - know your limits!' ad. this ad annoys me on a number of levels, firstly, the victim blaming level. most people who are raped are raped by people they know, people they *trust*, friends, family, friends of friends. the way the ad presents it, with a story from a girl who went to a club and a guy brought her a load of drinks and followed her home, eventually left her alone but she was worried it could have ended up a whole lot worse, implies that if you let a man buy you drinks, he is likely to follow you home and try to rape you.

now this is difficult too, since there is such a high proportion of men and who believe that there are circumstances in which a woman can be responsible for her own rape, (i am not sure if this is true of the men and children that are raped and abused, but 5% of women and 3% of men "believed that a woman was 'totally responsible' for being raped if she was intoxicated." ) and messages like this can serve to reinforce that opinion.

i kinda want the message to be 'all rapes happen when someone rapes someone else' the act is carried out by the agressor to the victim. the victim is a victim (do i sound like i am stating the obv a bit too much here?) they did not choose to be raped, no one 'asks for it'! rape happens because rapists rape! not because women drink, not because people 'turn gay' in prison, not because men can't control themselves, but because rape is an act of violence. it is a weapon of war, it is not about sex, but control.

alcohol may make rape victims easier to control. it may blurr their memories and lessen the (6%) chance of conviction. it does not make people get raped, it was not their damned fault!

how about 'if you are raped when drunk, no one will believe you and the court system will cross excamine your life, deem you a ho bag and there will be nothing else you can do about it, also, we recently cut funding for rape crisis call centres so good luck getting though, and if you need any councelling you can only have it for 6 months...

and although i understand that it might be easier to blame the victims, it doesn't just happen in this case, there are so many 'you should be more careful' warnings out there, extra security etc, but the fact is crime happens and no matter what you do there are people who will get past your defenses eventually. sitting at home in a locked room covered up doing nothing will not get anyone anywhere. that includes teenagers, who are being stabbed in record numbers, and carrying knives to defend themselves as they reason if you get 5 years for it, at least you are still alive.

people get raped because other people rape them

people get stabbed because other people carry knives, and use them


it's SO simple!

women: know your limits, and push them further every day. (no, i don't mean drink more every day.. gah) don't stay in, if you want to do something, volunteer, campaign, lobby. please don't sit at home all weekend!

grim fandango

definition: long and boring (but addictive) stupid pee cee game. isn't the sims, alas.

meth

ok i need to stop blogging about grim shiz buuuut

at the risk of sounding v naive, I don't know how common this is here? talk to frank haven't warned me about it but then i don't think I expected them to. Talk to frank still think the kids are on acid and driving VW buses like they did when they were kids.

but yeh, here is a vid from that american show 'intervention' - feature a blurred out naked girl who has been addicted to meth for 10 years, and is apparently quite run-of-the-mill.

i need to work out how to link vids properly on this thing but one baby step at a time eh?

anyway, here's some horrible things the NY times reported on it

its a grim drug, easy to make by people who think they are 'scientists' as they make it. Making it is really dangerous as it's uber explosive, but very cheap, which is causing some really big problems. Its very addictive, and makes people 'manic' and really horny. The girl in the vid believes she is the sister of jesus and satan, and that she is an angel that no one understands, this is not an uncommon problem.

The biggest problem, doctors who work with children say, is not with those born under the effects of the drug but with the children who grow up surrounded by methamphetamine and its attendant problems. Because users are so highly sexualized, the children are often exposed to pornography or sexual abuse, or watch their mothers prostitute themselves, the welfare workers say.

The drug binges tend to last for days or weeks, and the crash is tremendous, leaving children unwashed and unfed for days as parents fall into a deep sleep.

"The oldest kid becomes the parent, and the oldest kid may be 4 or 5 years old," said Dr. Mike Stratton, a pediatrician in Muskogee, Okla., who is involved with a state program for children exposed to drugs that is run in conjunction with the Justice Department. "The parents are basically worthless, when they're not stoned they're sleeping it off, when they're not sleeping they don't eat, and it's not in their regimen to feed the kids."

Ms. Glick recalls a group of siblings found eating plaster at a home filled with methamphetamine. The oldest, age 6, was given a hamburger when they arrived at the Laura Dester Shelter; he broke it apart and handed out bits to his siblings before taking a bite himself.

Jay Wurscher, director of alcohol and drug services for the children and families division of the Oregon Department of Human Services, said, "In every way, shape and form, this is the worst drug ever for child welfare."

I hope we manage to fight this here, it worries me that it's so cheap and so addictive, and it worries me a lot more in a 'think of the children' way. I think soon i need to blog about some lolcats or something, as it's getting depressing, its also holocaust memorial week, and eating disorder awareness week so really it can only get worse :-(