I have been wondering for a while now, how ironic it is that everything is so damn amazing. From the way we are made, the universe is, everything that goes together, how math is part of EVERYTHING, and how it seems to so many people that obviously because of those perfect things we must have a god. I wonder though, do they purposely push the thought of everything else, all the HORRIBLE, EVIL, PAINFUL, BLOODY things, that overrun the beauty of this world by far, just to make themselves feel better?

 I assume so

and I'm glad, at least they feel like by praying they actually have control over something impossible, or else they would go through the useless feelings I go through everyday.

They're useless because I can only help in the things that I can do right now and have been doing for so long (like being vegan, doing everything I can environmental wise, thinking about everything that I do and how it affects others), but can't really make a huge impact by myself, and no matter what, ever, the big huge horrible pain and torture that so many living beings go through every day will never ever go away. How can you still just focus on the beauty then? I really ask myself that question. How can they truly believe that there is a god, I mean these people have not even ONE question in their minds (by these people I mean my whole entire family and everyone else I know), after so much that they hear and see and know.

I think I'm becoming somebody that I never wanted to become.

I was already somebody who I wanted, but slowly, from seeing so much selfishness and uncaring attitudes and personalities around me, I'm slowly..somehow..becoming them. I might already be.

Of course I'm still vegan, feminist, into all the things I used to be into before, but I feel like I'm starting to put myself first now instead of everybody else. Feelings for certain people have changed completely. At first it was just my imagination but now I no longer feel them. Don't miss them either.

Ah..relief. I no longer have to have that pain of caring for people around me. Instead I focus on those living beings that I don't know. To those organizations I donate almost everything I have. Being kind and thoughtful for those who can't hurt me, or help me for that matter. It's turning out rather nice, really. I guess I'm not that disappointed in what I've become.

Hypocrisy? I don't think so. Caring for those I don't know and not focusing on the ones around me is just, returning the favor.



By the way, I found one of my new favorite feminist magazines. It's based in Israel so there's some Hebrew but for the most part it bonds with any feminist, male or female, and of any region in this world, not just the Hebrew speaking one.

www.fallopianfalafel.com

Rather crude though. So don't blame me if you see some 'disturbing' pictures of blood shooting from a cartoon girl's vagina.

Toodles.

This video is fucken sick. I am so disturbed by the hidden cameras. How can a man possibly get his dick sucked by a 4 year old. Men need some serious help.


Passing through the channels a picture of a distressed kid caught my eye, and I stayed on it.

It was a man, most likely a pastor, describing an episode of horrible abuse in a child porn film. I kept listening to the details, one by one. Tears were flowing to my eyes and I couldn't breathe, reminding myself why I don't want to have children, and reinforcing my strongest feelings described on a previous post about the 'beauty' of this world. No matter how much good we have this beats everything.

A child was naked in a bed among many different naked children. This one had its hands and feet tied together with duct tape. A nude man came and for about forty minutes brutally and without remorse raped the child while it cried for help over and over and over again...


I got some facts about it from random websites to really reinforce how serious this is. Your neighbor can be a molester, your child, your husband, your uncle, your cousin.

I've talked previously on how many women have been sexually abused in my family and how I know friends from my school that have been molested. I had a friend that graduated already that was raped by her uncle when she was 5 repeatedly when he babysat her for about a year. He did it to her sister too. He was a Buddhist monk. I'm sure her mom never thought her brother was capable of doing such a thing...

The NCMEC estimated in 2003 that 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1500%.

In a study of 1,713 people arrested for the possession of child pornography in a 1-year period, the possessors ran the gamut in terms of income, education level, marital status, and age.  Virtually all of those who were arrested were men, 91% were white, and most were unmarried at the time of their crime, either because they had never married (41%) or because they were separated, divorced, or widowed (21%) - http://www.missingkids.com

The child pornography industry is international and highly commercial. In America it is said to be one of the largest
‘cottage industries’ with a market worth some US$2-3 billion per year. It is claimed that producers have filmed one
million children in the US alone - source

This is a blog entry from Feministe:





I’m sure that you’ve already seen this elsewhere, but it’s certainly worth posting again.

Yesterday, 300 women in Afghanistan marched in the streets to protest a new law which affects the Shia minority of the population. It says that a woman cannot leave or work outside of the home without her husband’s permission, that she cannot refuse his requests to “make herself up,” and also that marital rape is a-okay. The women were met with 1,000 male counter-protesters, who hurled verbal abuse at them, threatened violence, and actually enacted violence in the form of throwing stones at the women:

The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.

“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”

The women scattered as the men moved in.

“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”

The women ran to the bus and dived inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.

“Whores!”

But the march continued anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.

It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.

With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.

“Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse,” said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. “It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants.”

Like everyone else, I am astounded at the bravery of these women and their activism.

Afghanistan’s President Karzai seems to be softening his stance and indicating that “the most controversial parts of the law” might be repealed, as the law has not yet been officially published and can therefore be changed. But it seems that the women are demanding a full repeal of the law, period. And it also seems that’s the absolute right stance to take.

President Obama has thus far indicated that he thinks the law is “abhorrent,” but has done nothing to stand with the women who oppose the law or to pressure Karzai to listen to them. You can sign a petition telling him to do just that.

ETA: Commenter Forrester has decided to match the first $1,000 of Feministe donations made to RAWA in solidarity with the women who took place in this march. If you donate online, forward those receipts to cara.kulwicki at gmail dot com so that I can verify with Forrester that they were made!

So tomorrow I'm volunteering at the voting booths from 6am until 8pm...or maybe 9 since I have to help clean up. That's 15 hours.

Giora is coming in 9 days.

Prom is next Saturday.

I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma for AP Environmental Science...it's eh.

I'm making a powerpoint along with Sarah Abulkalam and Tracy Dinh for AP English about the class for next year's victims and the outline is due in four days.

The Strawberry Festival is this Friday and the parade I'm marching in for the fourth time is this Saturday..I still have to learn my f*cking music for band. The song's name is Yaga and I forgot to bring my instrument home today and tomorrow I'll be gone all day so it's useless to even think about it. I have to take homework for the whole day because since it's just OC elections nobody is going to vote and we're going to be there for nuttin.

Yesterday I had horrible cramps again. I am never going off of birth control again ever in my life. Bless those artificial hormones that save me from horrific pain.

I'm so sick of 'people'. I wish I was my cat. Through the seasonal fleas and anger she seems to be enjoying her life more than me, maybe it's the ignorance, it's definitely the ignorance.

I want everything to be over already. I mean everything. I envy my great aunt.

I got a new shampoo, it's J.R. Liggett, vegan, biodegradable, it's a freakin bar of soap not in that horrible plastic packaging, and the smallest one counts like a 24 oz bottle which is pretty darn good.

Really nice quotes in this video from prestigious intellectuals that opposed the killing of any sentient being.

I got acrylic nails and I can't type, so all I will say is Giora is coming in 3 days and I can't believe it...

off to eat my hemp waffles with maple syrup, yum!!

I'm going to be in a little world called Giora-Deisy land for the next three weeks so as good as my intentions are of writing anywhere I wont lol... I will write back to you Jenny as soon as I'm out of it :P

Yesterday we met for the first time after 1 year and 3 months... and i almost cried when i hugged him in front of his uncle's house. We spent THE WHOLE day together. I haven't been this happy in about a year and 3 months...

Toodles for now!