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For those of you who don’t know me very well, I have some Hoarding tendencies.

I put “hoarding” with a capital H because it’s not just that I like getting stuff and keeping it near me. I feel safer and more complete when I’m surrounded by crap. This is an issue, I know. It’s especially an issue because we don’t have a huge amount of space, and all this crap collects dust and takes up real estate both physical and mental. Over the past few years, I’ve been paring down on a lot of our crap, which is often a challenge, because Nesko and I are both collectors and are both also completionists.

We also have smart phones that we can read electronic versions of books on, and a hard drive that can hold a lot of electronic books.

So I’ve been purging lately. I currently have 5 cloth grocery sacks full of books that I’m taking to the community center to donate for their next book drive. I sorted through my unmentionables and tossed out a bag full of underpants and pyjamas and socks that are unpleasant. I’m going to rifle through our closet again and toss things. I’m ordering CD/DVD wallets into which all of our CDs, DVDs, and game discs and booklets will be inserted, and all our jewel cases are going OUT THE DOOR.

And then there’s the garbage. Do I really need a giant teetering stack of small cardboard boxes? No. A garbage fall full of plastic grocery sacks? No. Stacks of grocery receipts from ten years ago? No. Homework from when I was in high school? No. So that’s going out the door, too. I managed to harvest a big bag of paper recycling just from my desk top. There are only so many used envelopes I need for note taking, you know?

It’s hard, physically and emotionally, but it’s also liberating.

 

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Sup guys, I'm auctioning off 2 signed Chuck Palahniuk books: "invisible monsters" and "choke." They are personalized (one to me, one to Nesko) and are reprints, not first ed.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/330686059376?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 (choke)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330686061073?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 (invisible monsters)

They're both good books, but we are downsizing our shit.
If you live near me and want to pick 'em up, I'll refund shipping.

I also have a first edition of "lullaby" and a first edition of "Diary" that I stupidly put a label in. Want either? $20.00 for "lullaby" and $10.00 for "Diary." Annnnd I have a reprint of "Fight Club" (NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OMG!!!!!!!!!) for $5.00.

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nch/bks/2843997670.html
http://chicago.craigslist.org/nch/tag/2844059634.html

I'm selling a large amount of graphic novels and RPGs. Take a look and see if you want any of them. I'm willing to ship for extra $, but would prefer someone local (Chicago, IL, USA) that can come pick up.

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I was going to invite a bunch of people over for New Year’s Eve but then I started feeling sick so only invited one person, then spent New Year’s Eve Day huddled under a blanket on the couch shivering and coughing and watching an “Adventure Time” marathon on tv instead of cleaning up. I briefly considered canceling with the one friend I invited, but I’m glad I didn’t.

My fever ultimately broke, due to the power of rum or friendship or because the virus was running its course, WHO CAN SAY. I made glorious pizza and said friend brought over clearance chocolates and cookies, and we sat around and had fun with Niko and then Nesko put him to bed and she read him 2 stories, and then the three of us adults sat around and talked a bit more and then put on the “Highlander” movie, which friend had never seen although she’s a fan of the TV show.

So basically, I rung in the New Year in the perfect way: with my family and a good, fun friend; with great pizza and rum and coke; with the Highlander. 17 year old me would be pleased with how my life turned out.

One of my resolutions for the upcoming year is to invite people over more often. Since this year we managed to put a ceiling in the bathroom, paint the bathroom, and paint most of the kitchen (still need to paint the trim in the kitchen and some other rooms and paint the built-in china cabinet in the kitchen hall), our place looks less like a hellhole. I really like having people over to watch movies or play games (or both). So I resolve to have people over once a month for movies OR for board games, and maybe try to also have people over once a month for RPG purposes. This will involve 1) keeping on top of household chores/cleaning and 2) not getting sick all the time.

Another resolution is to NAIL bread making, other than Challah. For whatever reason I can make a KICK ASS Challah loaf but non-enriched bread (where “enriched” means “eggs and milk” not “vitamins and fiber”) is still extremely meh. Since there’s a lot of people in my life who don’t/can’t eat eggs or milk, and since breads made without them are also cheaper, I’m going to keep working at it. Once I get a white bread down I’ll work on whole wheat, and then rye. One of my biggest challenges here is a cold kitchen affecting rise time, I think. So I need to just go ahead and let the dough proof for literally 2-3 times what the recipe calls for. Oh, and I’m also going to perfect caramel sauce and fudge sauce.

How was YOUR New Year’s festivities? Are you making any resolutions? How likely are you to stick to them? My dad routinely rotates 2 resolutions: 1) to eat more pie 2) to eat less pie. It seems to work well for him. I’m making a bunch of smaller resolutions on a tiny scale, weekly and monthly things that are more about establishing good habits than changing my entire life.

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According to <a href=http://www.npr.org/2011/09/20/140627334/millionaires-in-congress-weigh-new-tax-on-wealthy>an NPR article,</a> about 1% of the population of the USA are millionaires while almost half of Congress–46%– are millionaires. They obviously aren’t representing the actual people who make up the USA. This is, perhaps, explained why in a time of brutal economic downturn and lack of jobs the people running the country are busy slashing funding to create jobs and provide medical, dental, housing, and monetary assistance to people who need it most. It might explain, just a bit, why politicians are soundly endorsing “personhood”  amendments that are failing at the polls. It might, just might, account for why so many people are invested in the various “Occupy” movements.

Power is currently held in the plutocratic hands of people looking out only for themselves. Everyone else, apparently, can go screw.

 

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Buster Blonde of Persephone Magazine did a really great take down of the mythical college bootstraps studenthere. I want to drive it a bit further into the ground.

In case you can’t see the image or read the hand written text, it says:

I am a college senior about to graduate completely debt free. I pay for all of my living expenses by working 30+ hours a week making barely above minimum wage. I chose a moderately priced, in-state public university and started saving money for school at age 17. I got decent grades in high school and received 2 scholarships which cover 90% of my tuition. I currently have a 3.8 GPA. I live comfortably in a cheap apartment, knowing I can’t have everything I want. I don’t eat out every day, or even once a month. I have no credit card, new car, iPad, or smart phone- and I’m perfectly OK with that. If I did have debt, I would NOT blame Wall St or the government for my own bad decisions. I live below my means to continue saving for the future. I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my ass off for everything I have. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I am NOT the 99% and wehther or not you are is YOUR decision.

 

I graduated high school in 1997. Like the anonymous sign holder, I also went to an in-state public university and had savings from high school jobs. My senior year, for instance, I worked over 30 hours a week every week at a restaurant where the owner literally threatened me with a knife, because I knew my parents would be unable to pay for my cheap in-state public university tuition. Instead of padding out my college applications with extra curriculars, I worked and saved money. I was accepted to every college I applied to, and was courted by several I didn’t apply to as well. They all offered me scholarship money… thousands of dollars worth (one college offered me over $10k, which wasn’t enough). None of it covered the cost of tuition let alone books, fees, and living expenses which is why I enrolled at my shitty state university.

I should note that I went to a college preparatory high school. In theory, every single teacher and guidance counselor and staff member was there to promote college attendance, to help and guide students in selecting and applying to colleges, find financial aid and scholarships, etc. In practice, a lot of students (myself included) fell through the cracks. Overwhelmed and immature, not sure what to do or how to do it, we also had the “bad” guidance counselor who was more interested in coaching softball than guiding students. My educational experience was incredibly privileged and I still was unable to find ANY scholarships other than ones offered by schools. (If the internet, and search engines, had existed then things might have been different; instead I leafed through binders and catalogs with no idea what I was looking for). There are a LOT of kids, a huge amount of kids, graduating high school and interested in college who have no idea how to find scholarships and no guidance counselor to help them. The fact that this person allegedly got 90% of their tuition covered by just two scholarships implies that they had a LOT of help. Most people aren’t so fortunate.

I also worked as a student and rarely ate out. My final year of school, before my nervous breakdown and suicide attempt(s), I was working 3 part time jobs and still barely able to pay my bills… bills which consisted of telephone and credit card payments for text books and housing and basic clothing purchases… underpants, a sweater that fit, nothing extravagant. I punched into my first job at 8am, then went to class, then went to my second job, then went to class, then went to my third job and didn’t get done with that until almost midnight. It was a grueling and stressful existence and an appalling way to live. I was constantly “on,” short on sleep, and busting my ass for SIXTEEN HOURS A DAY. I made slightly more than minimum wage and still had a hard time paying the bills for my cheap-ass in-state shitty university education.

Smart phones did not exist at the time, but I currently have one. It’s possible to get an iPhone through my phone company for free, and the basic data plan is not much more than a regular phone plan. Poor people squandering money on smart phones as proof of their not-really-being-poor/making-bad-decisions is a shitty strawman argument that I wish would die in a fire. Credit cards enabled me to enroll at the start of the semester and pay it off over the course of said semester, as UIC did not offer payment plans. You paid all at once or didn’t go to class. I especially leaned on my credit card the semester UIC lost my financial aid payment, leaving me several thousand dollars short (but don’t worry, they found it a year later and gave it to me! Wasn’t that nice of them?). There’s this pervasive rumor that people in the USA have massive credit debt because they are buying frivolous things and are too stupid to make good financial choices. This lets people without credit card debt feel smug and superior and ignore the fact that most credit card debt is to cover emergency situations, like groceries while unemployed or surprise medical expenses or super fun sudden car repairs or tuition or the like. I also had no car at all and continue not to have a car, but I live in a city with pretty great public transit. I do not NEED a car to get to work or the grocery store (although it’s great when my husband can give me a lift places). There are places not-where-I-live where if you don’t have a functioning car you can’t get to work. You don’t go to work, you don’t get paid. You don’t get paid, you can’t pay your bills. A functioning car is necessary in some places, in most places. It’s shitty to sniff down your nose at people for filling a legitimate need.

College tuition and fees have been going up more and more each year while state and federal financial aid have been going down and down. College tuition, even at affordable in-state institutions, is getting out of reach of MANY people in a country where a bachelor’s degree has become the equivalent of a high school diploma, a requirement for the most basic untrained work. Sure, there’s community colleges… assuming those colleges are at all decent. One of the community colleges near where I grew up lost accreditation and didn’t regain it for several years, although people continued taking classes there. A friend of mine put in 4 semesters at a community college, spending time and money and learning things, only to find that most of his credits wouldn’t transfer to a traditional 4 year university because LOL COMMUNITY COLLEGES, AM I RITTE? Further, part of the reason we have the current problem with the housing market and foreclosures is that banks encouraged home owners to take out mortgages to fund their kids’ college educations, to invest in their kids. Which is great in theory, but helped prop up the skyrocketing cost of college tuition while shutting out people who didn’t own homes and couldn’t take out mortgages, and which also affected the people who held the mortgages when their interest rates shot up 10% overnight. WHOOPS. I don’t know about you, but banks that aggressively fuck people over while the government sits back and slashes funding to educational opportunities sounds like a pretty sound thing to get riled up about.

If you want to get really depressed, look at how many European countries subsidize their population when it comes to higher education. Spoiler:  a LOT of them do, while also providing decent, qualitative health care and in general taking care of all their citizens and not just the ones who make six figures or more  a year. The USA is losing vast amounts of money every single year by not taxing the top 1% of earners and not taxing huge businesses. We could stop slashing education and health care and social programs, we could repair our falling-apart roads and bridges and deteriorating infrastructure, we could subsidize higher education and training programs… or we could continue letting a small handful of people go swimming in their giant vaults of money or whatever the hell it is they do with it.

It’s incredibly depressing how many people are at best just barely getting by and at worst actively failing (the dude working 12 hours a day 7 days a week while dying from cancer springs to mind. The American Dream, am I right?) and defending to the death their right to suffer and languish and stagnate while a tiny fraction of people continue soaring to great heights. This person, with their 90% scholarship and their never eating out and their barely scraping by on minimum wage… it’s great that you’re self sufficient but is that honestly all you want, all you aspire to? To barely scrape by while working your ass off? To have no savings and no safety net and nothing to fall back on, no guarantee of employment and no vacation days or sick days? I’m sure you imagine that if you just WORK HARD! and LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS! and SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY!!!!! you’ll join the ranks of the 1% but let’s face facts: you’re graduating into an employment market with, in some areas, 9% or more unemployment. There is a LOT of competition for jobs, much of it from highly skilled, experienced people. How long will your rainy day savings last you when you’re unable to find a job because companies once based in the USA are moving more and more of their facilities (including office jobs, not just factory jobs) to other countries? When you realize that you’ll need to get an advanced degree to get employment or a promotion, and tuition is higher and state and federal aid lower? When your rent and groceries and gas and taxes (and your boss’s pay and bonuses) keep going up but your paycheck stays the same or even is reduced, as many state employees are finding themselves faced with having to accept pay cuts to keep their jobs?

Baby, you’re part of the 99%, and they’re fighting to protect you and your interests. They’re trying to make the world a better place for you. I’m sorry you can’t see that.

 

 

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Nesko watched “Captain America” the other day while I read a book, looking up only to comment on how crappy tiny-Steve-Rogers looked when standing/sitting next to a non-digitally altered person (because I am a jerk like that, but seriously, when they were in the taxi? He looked like a freakish child with a faintly blurred outline. WHAT. HOW. WHY. Fucking Darby O’Gill And The Little People did this better!) Anyway, at the end there’s an ad for the Avengers movie that’s coming out and Thor and Tony Stark were chillin’ and I’m all… you know, they probably have a special Avengers staff person whose entire job is to follow those two around and clean up their drunken messes. Stark’s a fun times alcoholic who could TOTALLY stop ANY TIME HE WANTED TO whoop just gonna go pee in this plant HA HA HA HA HA! FUN! BOOZE IS SO GREAT! And Thor is… a viking God. While we haven’t SEEN him wrestle pigs (yet) you know he’s gonna go there. Shining beacons of humanity, both of them! Actually, my very first thought was “Wow, what a sausage fest!”

Anyway, I’m putting the rest of this behind a cut because I’m going to talk about bugs and anxiety dreams now and I know that’s going to bother some of you.

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Hold me closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride is the first book in a series. Intelligently (and humorously) written, with a well-developed world and paranormal structure, it’s one of those books That Could Have Been Better… but is good enough as is that its shortfalls are pretty painful.

Sam (Samhain) Corvus LaCroix is a college dropout loser working fastfood with his best friend, Ramon and pals Brooke and Frank. What Sam doesn’t realize until a fateful game of potato hockey in the restaurant’s parking lot is that he’s also a Necromancer, someone who was born with the ability to talk to/raise/command/etc the dead. Also: his mom’s a witch, as in, she literally has magical abilities. And his nozzle of a dad who abandoned their family to start a new franchise in a much nicer part of town did so because of their supernatural abilities. And some dude named Douglas who’s a total badass wants to either train him, or kill. Or both!

Douglas kicks off Sam’s adventure by decapitating then reanimating Brooke, and sending her to Sam as a message.

And that’s part of the problem I have with this book.

Sam’s surrounded by totally awesome, powerful, confident, attractive women. His mom (the witch), his sister (maybe a witch, too), Brooke (who is smart and hot and athletic and is murdered to send him a message), Brid who is a powerful werewolf and next in line to lead her Pack, his next door neighbor (also a witch). These women are smart and capable and foxy and are secondary characters because… why? Conversely, why couldn’t Sam be female? There are a lot of super awesome writers who pull this shit (Lois McMaster Bujold and the Vorkosigan books and Scott Lynch and the Gentleman Bastard books I AM LOOKING AT YOU SO HARD RIGHT NOW) and it’s depressing. Because it sends a very clear message that it doesn’t matter how totally awesome a ladyperson is, she is fit only to be a secondary character and prop up a loser of a dude who can’t pass Bio101.

Years ago, I was in Band and I played the Cornet which is kind of like a Trumpet but different somehow (the tubing is shaped slightly differently, I think). I was unrelentingly awful at it, and eventually quit because I hit a plateau and just did not improve (being partially deaf in one ear did not help). Anyway, at one point early in my musical journey, my teacher kept piling on more and more specific complaints about my playing, and I got frustrated. And he said, the reason I’m complaining is that you’re getting better, so instead of one huge wall of wrong things we can pick out the individual things that are wrong. So although it SEEMS like I’m finding a million things wrong with your playing and that’s a bad thing… it’s actually good, because there’s enough that you’re doing right that the wrong things are standing out.

And I kept thinking about that while reading this book, because there’s stuff in this book I really liked. The action was quick paced, the Council and supernatural world feel fleshed out, Douglas was a good villain. The way Necromancy works in this world, and what it is, is well thought out. McBride manages to make the setting (PNW) real for me, someone who grew up in the midwest and lives in Chicago. The dialog is snappy. It wasn’t very predictable. It’s the first book in a series and I will probably check out the next book, something I wouldn’t do if I disliked a book.

I like Sam. I like the secondary female characters. It’s nice to see so many kick ass ladies tromping about. But at the end of the day, the people who are the focus of the book and the saviors are all male. And I’m just really tired of that.

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Does anyone live in Juneau County (especially in/near Mauston), WI? Or know anyone who does? I'm wondering if someone could do me a super huge favor involving picking up and overnighting paperwork. I would, of course, totally reimburse any fees.

Let me get this out of the way before I say anything else.

If your objection to a book is OH GOSH THERE ARE HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE  AND THEY ARE TREATED AS HUMAN BEINGS then I don’t want to know you. If you think including gay couples and persons of color in a book is “political correctness run amuck,” then you’re welcome to find the door. Not surprisingly, most negative reviews of “Everywhere Babies” by Susan Meyers, which portrays families that are not composed entirely of apparently white apparently straight people, pick just that to complain about.

“Everywhere Babies” is a rhyming book about babies. The text is gentle and lively and the babies are adorable and do a lot of different things (walk, run, eat, sleep, smile, cry). My 2.5 year old loves this book. He likes the text, he likes the rhythms of it, and he LOVES the babies. He identifies some of the babies (fat babies versus thin babies, for example; crying babies versus happy babies), he narrates what the babies are doing, he makes up stories about the babies. It’s a pretty solid hit with him, something he requests re-reads of.

As mentioned– as, I think, it’s known for– the book depicts same-sex couples parenting babies/children as well as just walking around, and there are black-looking babies, Hispanic-looking babies, Asian-looking babies, etc. along with the white-looking babies. There are also what appear to be mixed-race families. So if that’s something you’re looking for in a book, this one has it, and not in an OBVIOUS way. It’s not “Heather Has A Black Mommy And A White Daddy,” it’s not the SUBJECT of the book, it’s just there. Not commented on. Treated as normal. Another thing treated as normal is the idea that male-appearing people will do child care duties without female-appearing people around. It’s not all mommies and babies. There’s a lot of dads and grandpas taking babies on walks, feeding them, etc. So there’s a hearty dose of gender balance as well, which I haven’t seen touched on as much in reviews (except, again, someone complaining on amazon that OH MY GOSH BABIES NEED THEIR MOMMIES and shouldn’t leave the house before they’re a full year old. Say it with me. WHAT.)

In summary, it’s a good solid book with well written text, a high readability level, and lush artwork. We checked this out of the library but I’d rate it as a “buy” quality book, and one I’d give to other babies as a gift.

Mirrored from Thoughtful Consumption.