The Angry! It's Everywhere!

For the sake of my mental health, I've been intentionally avoiding the internet for a while now - no blogging for about a month now, no Twitters for more than a week, checking my email only once or twice a day, reading ten or twenty blog posts instead of hundreds every day. Being on the internet was beginning to feel more like a compulsion than an enjoyable hobby, so I cut myself off. I've been spending more time knitting and reading. Next, I might try going outside. The world is my oyster!

Also, however, I have to admit that the shear weight of horribleness on the intertubular cyberway was also starting to get me down. I know it's cowardly, but I decided to take the luxury of sticking my head in the sand for a while and acting like I can ignore all the patriarchal bullshit for at least a few days at a time. My first mistake was forgetting to gouge out my eyeballs and eardrums because that's the minimum it would take.

The Husband recently bought some magazines to read on the plane during a recent trip. One of them, Sound and Vision Magazine, was about ridiculously huge televisions and DVDs and frivolous fun crap like that. It had a picture of Masi Oka from Heroes on the cover. My unhealthy obsession with TV shows of all kinds has been previously documented, so I thought I'd thumb through it looking for more obsession-enabling gadgets to drool over.

I didn't realize this publication is Not For Me. You see, I'm a silly annoying wife who only exists to thwart my husband's quest for awesome stuff. This didn't dawn on me until I started reading this article. (It's short so you can read it really quick. However, I don't know how long they keep their articles posted on online.) I don't know why this stupid article about installing a (really awesome) giant screen in your living room is what made me finally want to speak up when there are such atrocities going on every day, but I actually decided to write the editor an email.

Let me quote from the article "Best of Both Worlds" from the September 2008 issue.

"While most guys would giggle like wee schoolgirls at the thought of having a TV dominate the room, their significant others generally prefer a diminutive set that sits demurely in the corner."

As a "significant other" it felt like a slap in the face to be so suddenly and dismissively written out of the conversation. My reproductive organs in no way affect my ability to appreciate and enjoy incredible A/V technology. You can believe that none of our friends spend time at our house marveling at our frilly pillows or whatever you mean by my "design acumen." Everyone I know, endowed with a Y chromosome or not, would agree that a 100-inch viewing screen in my living room really would be worth marveling at.

The "Wife Acceptance Factor" of your magazine just hit rock bottom in this household.

I guess many problems seem so overwhelmingly enormous that my email or signature on a petition couldn't possibly accomplish anything. But maybe someone at this magazine will actually realize that women do appreciate and spend money on stuff that doesn't clean carpets or mix dough, and maybe their advertisers wouldn't appreciate them marginalizing all those potential consumers. Of course it would be great to be respected just for. . . I don't know. . . being a person, instead of a potential source of revenue, but let's not get all crazy now.

Drugs Are Bad, mmKay?

I had my doctor appointment today to make I sure I didn't break my brain. She confirmed that the Lexapro withdrawal probably is making me a little bonkers, and although I really shouldn't have quit taking it all of a sudden, the damage won't be permanent. Unfortunately, another side effect I didn't anticipate is that my blood pressure is now really high. It's not like, internal-organ-blow-out high, but it probably explains the headache and dizziness.

And, get a load of this! Walgreens called me today to tell me my refill is ready - my refill of Lexapro they told me they didn't have, which started this whole pharmaceutical fiasco. Walgreens can suck my butt.

Revolution Never?

The conference I was at last week was hosted by the state for agencies that work on preventing bad things from happening to kids: child abuse, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, suicide, etc. Many of these problems are also wrapped up in the issue of poverty, so the opening keynote speaker gave a presentation on the book, Bridges Out of Poverty. I can't recommend this book enough for anyone who has to face poverty, whether it be in your personal or professional life, or if you just want to understand the experiences of a huge segment in our society.

During her presentation the speaker told a story of a woman she had been working with. It's not an exceptional story, and it's one I've heard a million times in different incarnations, but for some reason it hit me in the gut this time.

The woman - I'll call her Mary - was receiving training from a nonprofit agency on how to be more self-sufficient. She really took the lessons to heart and worked hard to get some education and improve her chances for a good job.

Mary received certification as a nursing assistant, and got a job at $7 an hour. She was a reliable, dedicated worker and got a raise to $7.75 an hour after only a few months.

Once Mary was making "so much" money, her housing subsidy was cut; her food stamps were cut; all the benefits she counted on to make ends meet while working hard and trying to improve her family's life were cut. Even though she did what she was "supposed to" - got an education, worked hard, received a raise - she found herself $400 behind every month. Despite her full time job, Mary had to sell plasma to pay her bills.

What should she have done differently? So much of the political rhetoric of the current government touts personal responsibility and excoriates the welfare state. Mary took responsibility and made good choices, and look what happened to her.

The main reason this story infuriated me is that it makes me feel powerless. An individual can respond to so many problems by volunteering time or making donations. But when it comes to economic and political forces I have no faith that anything I do will make life better for people like Mary. It doesn't matter how many letters I write or who I vote for or where I shop. As a society we've decided that people like Mary are expendable. We're willing to leave her behind no matter how hard she tries. It makes me sick, and it makes me want to burn something down.

Fun With Road Rage

I'm driving home from work just a few minutes ago. Traffic is kind of stop-and-go, so when this guy wants to merge in front of me, I slow down and let him in. I can see his face framed perfectly in his side view mirror, and he is cussing me out. Which is understandable since I'm the nasty bitch who just slowed down and let him in.

His tantrum is so ridiculous that I just can't take him seriously, so I grin really wide at him and give him a big friendly wave. This turns him from pissy little dickhole into absolutely enraged dickhole. He sticks his hand out the window and flips me off, so I give him two big thumbs up. He's still ranting at me, so I grin again and give him the "OK" sign.

At this point he just loses it and flings this water bottle out the window. Which kind of scares me because littering is, like, so intimidating. Of course I start obviously cracking up, so he can't take it anymore, changes lanes, and zooms away - in what I'm sure was an impressively threatening manor.

I had no idea jackasses could be so much fun.

Please Tell Me It's Satire Day on the Internet

Do people seriously believe things like this?

Clinton...
.... flaunts cleavage

Or are you going to say that "flaunts" is too active a verb? She has cleavage. Just happens to have it. Just happens to wear a top that happens to be low enough that you can see it if you happen to have eyes. Just happens to wear it to the Senate floor to give a speech about the cost of education. Are you going to say that we ought to be giving attention to the content of that speech and not to the presentation of the woman who would be President?

Or this?

Linda Carroll, 59, who lives in Crystal Springs, Miss., and works at an assembly plant, said she supported Bill Clinton and admired Mrs. Clinton for standing by her husband through their marital problems. But Ms. Carroll said she was “not ready for a lady president.”

“I’m not for this women’s lib stuff,” she said.

Yeah, we've come a long frickin' way, baby.

Major Fashion Miscalculation

Do you ever see a stranger in public who just looks so stupid it gives you rage? It happens to me from time to time, and I feel bad about giving a crap what some random person is wearing, but I can't help it.

The Husband and I went to a teeny tiny little folk music concert last Friday. It was a very chill, small, and older crowd who mostly looked like someone's grandparents. But, this one guy was bringing enough weird for the whole room.

I wish I had thought to snap a surreptitious photo with my phone, but you'll just have to use your imagination.

Weird Al Yankovic from the neck up.
Hippy, flower-child wanna-be to the waist.
Ninja from the waist down.

Seriously.

Catching Up: Home Edition

I haven't been posting much because so much has been going on that it's been difficult to organize my thoughts. Fortunately most of this stuff would make pretty boring blog-fodder, so you haven't missed much.

There was that whole thing about buying a house. Moving went pretty smoothly even if it did take a thousand years to clean out the old place. I expect it will only take a few hundred more to finish unpacking.

Yard maintenance has turned out to be more difficult than I expected. We planned to buy an old-timey reel mower, like this:



However, we didn't actually get around to purchasing one before we had the lawn that needed mowing. We innocently thought we could mosey over to Home Depot and pick one up after we moved in. According to the Home Depot guy they only sell reel mowers on the web site. According to the web site, they don't sell them at all.

By this time the lawn was getting a little shaggy, so we figured we'd hire a landscaping service to hack the lawn into a manageable state while we decided where to buy a mower. We picked some guy out of the back of the neighborhood magazine, and he set up a time to come out and give us an estimate. Once he got there (two days later) he took one look at it and decided there was no way he was touching our nasty, shameful lawn with his precious equipment.

On to Plan B. I called my Aunt and asked to borrow her lawn mower. She said, "Sure," but warned me that it's a little tricky to use. In order to start it, there's a lever you have to wiggle, but not too much. And a thing you have to press, but not too hard. Etc., etc.

The Husband, after much persistence, did manage to start the thing up, which was much easier once we figured out the spark plug wire had fallen off, and wrestle it into submission long enough to get a good start on the lawn.

In the meantime, the reel mower we ordered from The Great and Powerful Internets arrived. Turns out I'm too short to operate it properly. Oh, darn. Poor The Husband will have to be in charge of mowing the lawn all by himself. I really do feel bad about that, but I also feel bad about being a border-line midget, so I'm glad some advantage is to be had from my shortcomings. (Get it? Shortcomings?)

The Husband finished up the front yard pretty well with the reel mower, relieving my fears of an angry mob of neighbors and code enforcement officials descending on our house with violence in their hearts. However, the back yard was still an extravagant wonderland of weeds and crabgrass, so The Husband went back to working on it with my Aunt's gas mower. Well, that project wasn't even half-way done when the pull-cord started coming unraveled.

Oh well, no one can see the back yard anyway. But, with all the rain we've been having, the front yard needed to mowed again by this point. So, The Blessed Saintly Husband got the reel mower back out. Only now the blades wouldn't turn, so the mower was about as effective as this only less fun.



Now we were back to Plan A.2 or whatever the hell it was, and we called a landscaper. Who didn't show up. How do these guys make money mowing lawns when they won't actually mow any lawns? Is the whole landscaping business just an elaborate front for money laundering or something?

Anyway, in a dramatically anticlimactic twist, we finally found someone who did show up and mowed the lawn. The End.

If Chivalry's Not Dead, I'm Gonna Kill It

Dudes, seriously. Opening the door for a woman is not polite or chivalrous if you're going to be aggressive about it.

This afternoon I'm entering my office building. There are two sets of double doors. I'm going in the door furthest to my right while two guys are coming out of the doors on my left. I have my hand on the door handle, about to pull it open, when one the of the guys says, "Hey, you don't have to go in that door. Come over here. I'll hold it for you."

So I reasonably enough tell him, "That's OK. I'm already right here."

As I'm going through the door he raises his voice to me and gets this nasty tone. "Fine. I was just trying to be helpful."

"Oh, and I appreciate it," I say. (lie)

Whatever. Like I'm going to shut the door I'm already using and take five extra steps in my uncomfortable shoes (thanks for that, too, by the way, patriarchy) to make you feel all manly and shit.

It takes a special kind of jerk to take a simple, helpful act and turn it into something mean and self-aggrandizing.

I'm Busy Sputtering With Rage

So you should go read Bitch, Ph.D.'s excellent non-sputtery post instead.

Barely-Rising-to-the-Level-of-Primate-Behavior Bathroom Antics

I hate for this to be the first thing I write after such a long leave-of-blog, but someone has pooped on the bathroom seat in my office. She took a shit OUTSIDE of the toilet. Has the seat pee-er decided to escalate her assault on decency, or does she have some hardcore competition? I don't know, and I don't want to know. I just want to share a bathroom with the well toilet-trained. Is that too much to ask?

P.S. How wrong is it that I just thought about going back and taking a picture of it with my phone so you would have to look at it, too?

Unamusing Bathroom Antics

Every single day around 4:30 p.m. someone pees all over the toilet seat in the first stall of the ladies' room in my office building. Yesterday there was actually a puddle on the floor, too.

WHY??? Not to mention, HOW???

Why doesn't she just use a seat protector and sit down?

How are her pants and shoes not completely soaked with pee?

Does she take off her clothes before she goes?

Does she hold it all day until 4:30, and is that why it sprays everywhere?

Why does she only go in the first stall?

Is she doing it on purpose?

How does she think this is OK????

Lost, Adrift, Cut Off From Humanity

My regular email address is down for who knows how long, and it's driving me crazy. This is what the server hosting type place told The Husband: "It is being looked into... it is not an easily rectified problem, but I believe it will be up shortly." I'm sure I'm missing out on all sorts of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that are just sitting there in my inbox unread.

In the meantime, anyone can contact me at unrulyduckling at hotmail dot com. If you've sent something today you want me to respond to, please resend it to the Hotmail address. In the future I won't be checking that address very often, and I'll just use it for blogular activities. But, for right now, it's all I got.

Jury Duty

A few days ago I was chosen to serve on a jury. As annoying as it was and as much as it threatened to ruin some delicately planned machinations at work, I was a little excited to try something new, something I'd only ever seen on TV. However, it was far from a Veronica Marsian romp of cleverness and intrigue. (Although, I was chosen to be foreperson because of my adorable youthfulness.) It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I was forced to confront the fact that I live in a pleasant little bubble compared to most women. I work in an office full of progressive women; my husband seems to have effortlessly opted out of the patriarchy; and my friends are well-educated, thoughtful people. However, in the regular world, there's a nasty streak of contempt and disrespect for women very close to the surface. I believed I was keenly aware of this, but I rarely encounter the reality face-to-face, and it felt like a punch in the stomach.

Before the trial even began, and we were just in the process of jury selection, the judge was giving us instructions and trying to break the ice. Unfortunately, all his attempts at humor involved wives as difficult harpies and how his daughters are greedy and willful. Yeah, that's hilarious, you chauvinist jerk-wad.

The case we were going to be hearing involved an accusation of domestic violence. The attorneys asked potential jurors questions trying to determine how they might respond to such a case. One woman actually said that she didn't know if it was right to charge men in this sort of case because women tend to bring it on themselves. I was under the mistaken impression that even if some people privately believe that sort of crap, everyone understands that it is inappropriate to publicly say so. Even if she was just trying to sound crazy enough to get out of jury duty, couldn't she have come up with something less vile?

After we heard the case and were deliberating, a major point of contention was the credibility of each person involved since there was almost no physical evidence to indicate what actually happened. The phrases "...you know how women are," and "...you know how women get," were bandied about with alarming frequency. At one point I started yelling about "how men get," which involved popping little ladies in the eye when they have the nerve to object to men having affairs or when they neglect to cook dinner. Not that I believe men as a whole tend to get violent any more than I believe women as a whole tend to get hysterical, but the fact that most of the other jurors seemed to find her less credible just because she was a women made me feel a little violent and hysterical.

In the end I had to admit that there was enough reasonable doubt about what happened that night that it would be wrong to convict. However, I've been struggling about whether or not I made the right decision. Personally, I'm pretty sure that he did hit her on purpose and out of anger, not self-defense. But, how sure is sure enough to convict someone who is entitled to a presumption of innocence? How much doubt is reasonable?

Obligatory Plan B Post

My head nearly exploded yesterday morning listening to some chauvinist fuck on the radio speaking against Plan B on behalf of the Concerned Women for America. Evidently if Plan B is available over the counter women everywhere will turn into a bunch of dirty sluts faster than you can say, "Jezebel." These people believe that a safe and effective medical treatment should be withheld from the public because it may (which is a stretch) encourage certain perfectly legal behavior with which they don't happen to agree.

What's the "logical" extension of this philosophy? Let's take cholesterol medication off the market because it encourages people to eat unhealthy food. How about banning medications to prevent heart attacks since they encourage people to be lazy. We should stop treating head injuries because that just encourages people to ride motorcycles without helmets. Hell, Viagra is going to turn Americans into a bunch of erection-having man-whores, so let's ban that, too.

Let's be very clear. This debate is not about science or medicine. It's about controlling women's sexuality and limiting reproductive choices. Finally having Plan B available over the counter - only to women over age 18 and only through a pharmacist if he or she is willing to sell it - is only the tiniest of victories. Women all over this country don't have access to affordable health care, including contraception. 86% of counties in the U.S. have no abortion providers. And, current policies do little to support women who want to make the choice to have a family. 20% of children in this country live below the poverty line. A living wage and quality, affordable childcare are nothing more than pipe dreams for many mothers.

Depending on the study you look at, economic problems are the reason given for at least 25% of abortions and probably many more. Other women choose to have abortions because becoming a mother will force them to lose their jobs or to drop out of school. Abortions are declining among women with higher incomes, but are increasing among poor women. You want to reduce abortions? Make sure women have the resources they need to be responsible mothers and successful human beings.

More on Angel

This started off as a response to Dave-o-rama's comment about my previous drunken ramble regarding season 5 of Angel, but I just kept going on and on and on. So, since this is my blog, instead of a humble comment, you get a disjointed, opinionated post about a couple of series that ended years ago and on which my thoughts have absolutely no bearing.

But anyway, I agree with Dave that Smile Time was totally awesome. Puppet Angel is one of my favorite things ever on this earth. However, I hated The Girl in Question. Spike and Angel's Italian adventure was too zany, madcap, Looney Tunes for my taste. Then, on the other end of the spectrum there was way too much angsty Wesley and Fred's poor parents. That said, the CEO of the Rome W&H office was hilarious, as was Andrew.

I did like Illyria way better than Fred, and I wish we had seen more of that character than just her walking around looking bewildered and slightly pissed off. Harmony was definitely a lot of fun, and I agree that Harm's Way was a good one. The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco was on it's way to being good, but I think it didn't get all the way there - not quite campy enough and not quite clever enough.

And actually, I did love Spike when he was first on Buffy. I adored bat-shit crazy Drusilla, too. One of my favorite episodes of Buffy ever was Fool for Love, where Buffy gets Spike to tell her how he killed 2 past Slayers. He is one bad-ass sexy beast in that one. Once he fell in love, had a chip, didn't have a chip, got a soul, blah, blah, blah, then I started to hate him.

I'm surprised to be saying this, but I really missed Cordelia in season 5. The whole Cordelia-as-a-higher-power storyline was a little too cheesy and earnest in my opinion, but I don't think any other character filled the hole she left in the group.

Overall, I guess I enjoyed watching Whedon's confident, funny, kick-ass characters, and I feel like both Buffy and Angel devolved into whiny, hand-wringing group-therapy sessions close to the end. I know that's harsh, but with both series I really felt let down after investing [an unreasonable amount of] time and emotional energy in them.

Hi There

I thought I'd drink too much and then blog about... you know... stuff.

First of all, the 5th and final season of Angel SUCKED. Some of the worst television EVAR! It was never as good as Buffy, so it doesn't feel like the kind of betrayal that the last season of Buffy was, but still, stink-er-roo.

However, courtesy of Netflix, I got a sneak peak at the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This has the potential to be some awesome TV. Somehow the pilot managed to be both edgy and idealistic at the same time. I love kick-ass, feel-good TV.

Anyway, I was going to blog about the wine I drink, but all I had were left-overs. I highly recommend Zenato Pinot Grigio, but if you leave a half-drunk bottle in the fridge for a few weeks, not so much. I am about to start a new experiment. I had some money left over from my birthday, so I spent it on a case of wine at Central Market. (If you buy six or more bottles, they give you 10% off.) My only criteria for choosing which bottles I bought was that they cost $10 or less. I'll let you know how it turns out.

So, I'm wondering if it counts as drinking alone if someone else is there, but they're not drinking. If it does, I probably have a problem. It's strange, though, that I can have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner at a restaurant, and it doesn't faze me. However, a couple of glasses at home and I'm all but howling at the moon. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

Also, although I can not confirm it conclusively online, it appears that Dallas and several of the surrounding cities have ordinances against snow-cone stands. If you ever thought that Dallas sucks, now you know it's true. When I really want a snow-cone I drive down Beltline into Carrollton over by the Sack n Save and the Vietnamese food restaurants. Rainbow is the best, but coconut is good, too. When Amy Ackers character changes into Illyria, she reminds me of coconut snow-cones.

It finally rained over here tonight. There was thunder and lightening and it was awesome. I love storms, although I often have nightmares about tornados. They're always about seeing tornados all around me and scrambling to find shelter. But the storms are always over by the time I find a place to hide, and then everything is beautiful and clear and smells like laundry. Does that reveal a sickening level of mental health, or what?

Lucky me, I just found a bottle of Fu-Ki plum wine in the fridge. How old is that? I don't even remember when someone brought that over. It still tastes the same, which I'm not taking as a good sign.

Hey! Weren't we going to have some sort of vegetable festival? That kind of rhymes. I think that's what we should call it. I have lots of vegetarian recipes, and I like to act like I can cook, so I think we should do that pretty soon.

Well, I just finished the last episode of Angel, and WTF? Seriously, I sat through an entire shit season for that? And what the hell happened to Lorne? He just rode off into the sunset. I don't think so. He's the only one I really cared about by the end. Maybe I missed something, but hey, wine is better than Angel.

Also, I like it when my cat yawns and meows at the same time.

I used to have rats as pets, and they were some of the sweetest little animals. The first one I got was named Frisky, and he was white with pink eyes. He originally belonged to my brother, but my brother was a pretty little kid and didn't want to take care of him. Frisky died of cancer despite my dad's best efforts. My dad actually did surgery on my little rat to try to fix him. He's a good dad. My second rat's name was Ziggy - a black rat. He died of cancer, too. Evidently, rats are very prone to cancer, which is one reason why labs like to do experiments on them. My third rat was an impulse buy after watching an episode of Crocodile Hunter about rats in Australia. Evidently, they are HORRIBLE. Anyway, I went to the pet store with my roommate and got a tan and white rat. He looked so sad and lonely, though, on the way home that we turned around and got another black and white one. Their names were Rats Domino and Minnesota Rats. Because I thought I was clever.

Paranoia

I think that someone is stealing little things from my office. First, I had a pair of headphones disappear. That was right around the time I moved from my cube into a closet an office. I could have sworn I had the headphones in my new office, but it was possible that I just lost track of them. Also, they were pretty crappy, kind of falling apart, old school headphones that probably came for free with a portable tape player (yes, tape player), so it wouldn't make any sense for someone to take them.

Next, I couldn't find my hand sanitizer. I looked in all my desk drawers, my cabinets, my purse, my file drawers. Then, I dug around in all the drawers of my old desk, which I'm sure the person currently sitting there just loved. It was definitely gone. But, I figured, it was a pretty small bottle, so maybe I used it all up and just forgot.

Then, my Tic Tacs vanished. That was when I really started to think that something weird was going on. A couple of mornings ago, I was going to a meeting with my boss. She came to my office to get me, and, since I had just been drinking coffee, I popped a few Tic Tacs into my mouth and left to go to the meeting. I got back around lunch time, had a bite to eat, and intended to have some Tic Tacs. They were gone. No Tic Tacs in my desk. I knew they were there just a few hours ago. In case I had put them in my purse, I emptied the whole thing out. No Tic Tacs in my purse. Maybe I did put them in my purse and they fell out in the car. No Tic Tacs in the car. What the hell?

Am I going crazy? The story of the time someone stole my computer will probably convince you that I am.

When I moved into my office my computer moved with me. It was finally set up close to the end of the day, so before I went home I checked that the computer was hooked up correctly, I could log onto the network, etc. Everything seemed fine, but when I came in the next morning, the computer was off, which seemed strange because I had left it on the night before.

I reached under my desk to turn on the tower, and it was gone. I knew it had been there the night before. Why would someone have taken my computer? I was pretty pissed off because I had been roaming around from cubicle to cubicle for two days trying to find unused computers to work on while my office was being set up. Finally I had an office to myself, and what do they do? Take my computer for no reason without even telling me.

I called the office manager find out where my computer was, and I'm getting ready to be all huffy and annoyed. She picked up the phone at the same moment I noticed a significant detail. I never had a tower under my desk. I had a desktop computer sitting right there under my monitor. "Uh, wrong number," I mumbled as I gently hung up the phone and began my day without further incident.

So you see, I can imagine opening a drawer someday and finding my headphones, my hand sanitizer, and my Tic Tacs innocently sitting there as they had been all along. In the meantime, does anyone have any surveillance equipment I could borrow?

You Don't Say...

TIGTA Finds Inappropriate Email on 74% of IRS Employees' Computers

Thanks, Traivor!

What Would the Internet Do?

I'm sure you all know of one of those people who feel compelled to forward you every damn thing that comes into their email inbox - pictures of kittens, delete-this-and-you-hate-Jesus chain letters, jokes you thought were funny in the 6th grade, etc. I am on the email list of one such person.

She works for the IRS in a department that's in charge of outreach programs to low-income taxpayers, so the financial literacy program at my job works with her a lot as a member of a coalition. She may send 20 messages in a day, all from her government address. One time she even invited her whole address book to her daughter-in-law's baby shower!

I've put up with these stupid emails since I started working here because she seems like the kind of person to hold a grudge and make my job difficult if I piss her off. I also believe that she would cut us off from other organizations and resources if she gets mad at us. However, a few months ago she forwarded the email referenced in this Snopes article along with some hateful, bigoted commentary about the entire religion of Islam. Keep in mind this is coming from her irs.gov work email. I was so disgusted and angry my head nearly exploded. I immediately sent out the link to the Snopes article to everyone who received the email, and one person contacted me privately saying she was glad I did.

My boss got the same email, and we talked about how we could address this with her supervisor without getting into a big, nasty showdown with this woman that would make it difficult for us to carry out programs for our clients. We don't have any idea who her supervisor is or how to get the phone number. Getting through to the IRS isn't the easiest thing in the world.

Before we could decide what to do the IRS lady sent out an email apologizing profusely for sending out false information and filling our inboxes with unprofessional messages. She promised to only send out work related emails from then on. We figured she had already gotten in trouble, and that was the end of that.

Well, that lasted less than a week before the stupid "humorous" emails started again. At one point she sent out an advertisement for tickets to the Evander Holyfield fight. WTF?

Here's where the dilemma comes in. Last week the person who took my old position called me to ask if I had seen the IRS lady's latest email. She forwarded a bunch of pictures taken during the demonstrations about the cartoon of Mohammed of protesters with violent messages on their signs. She didn't add any commentary to the email, but the forwarded message included ugly statements about Islam again. This time, however, she had specifically left me and my boss off the email.

Something has to be done about this, but I have no idea what. Yes, those pictures were accurate, and angry crackpots were carrying signs about butchering and beheading those who mock Islam. But, that is just as wrong and crazy as those excellent "Christians" who disrupt military funerals to chant "God Hates Fags" or Catholic priests who molest children and work to cover it up. This woman has no right to spread hate and fear of an entire religion, much less to use government resources to do it. (Just because the president, the military, and the congress does it, doesn't make it right. That might not be a completely fair assessment, but I thought I'd beat you to it.)

At the same time, we need her help (or at least her department's help) to run a program that does a lot of good for the people we serve. If we make it harder for them to get the services they need by standing up against one wrong, we commit another one. Addressing her directly does no good. Even if we could figure out where to complain, doing so anonymously seems cowardly. Doing nothing seems even worse.

WWTID?

Yield. To. Ramp. Mother. Fucker.

You may have noticed these things called "signs." They are intended to provide you with instructions to follow as you are driving. For example, if a "sign" states "Yield to Ramp" that means if you are driving down the access road, and a car is coming down the exit ramp (as referenced on said "sign") to join you on the access road, you will be expected to *yield* to that car.

If you don't know what yield means, I am not going to explain it to you. Please turn in your drivers license and proceed to purchase a comfortable pair of walking shoes. I don't even want to see you on a bicycle. A bicycle might dent my car when I run over your non-yielding ass.