The sweetness of pitties

Fading away

Although my tattoo hasn't even been sketched yet (I think), I'm still wildly excited about getting it. I can't wait to have Serenity and the SG-1 Stargate tattooed on my back, followed by all the other ships, gates and galaxies I've chosen for my piece.

I get that, while tattooing is becoming more mainstream, it's still not really accepted as something a "good girl" would do. Fair enough; I'm not a very good girl, although I'm nowhere near as bad a girl as I'd like, or as bad as some seem to think tattooing will make me (a whole other rant).

What really bugs me, though, is the assumption people make that I'll somehow end up regretting getting myself inked when I'm older. As though these things that i have specifically chosen to be put onto my body, because of the meaning they hold for me, will suddenly become unacceptable to my brain and I'll be desperately trying to get rid of them, covering up at every opportunity and ashamed to show myself.

Look: I'm almost 40 years old. I'm pretty well aware of the fact that skin sags as one ages, and tattoo ink fades, and wrinkles happen. None of that matters to me. I'm not getting tattooed because I think it's going to make me look hot, badass, or whatever it's supposed to be doing in some imaginary world of why-the-fuck-would-she-do-this. I'm not having ink stuck under my skin for anyone but me. I've chosen my themes and my images very carefully, because they have real meaning and purpose for me, and they represent important things in my life, things that make me who I am today. I don't care that they're from TV shows, or books, or movies, or comics, or are imaginary creations that don't exist. In fact, that's pretty much the point, if you've read my post on my sci-fi back piece.

Is it supposed to be about how the tattoo will sag as I age? That it'll wrinkle and fade and look bad? Newsflash: I'm no supermodel as it is. I'm not hot, sexy or mysterious; and I'm certainly not getting tattooed to turn anyone on. Again: it's for me. And as my whole body ages, so will my tattoo; it's meant to be part of me for the rest of my life, just like everything else will (hopefully) be part of me for however long I live - hair, teeth, arms, legs, skin. My ears will get bigger and I'll lose my hearing; my eyes will get saggy and wrinkled and I'll have trouble seeing; my face will droop and I'll get jowly and my butt will sit behind my knees and my boobs will hang down to my waist and SO WHAT? It's called GETTING OLD. So my tattoos will GET OLD with me!

Besides, as someone else said, when I'm old I'll be too damn busy worrying about my arthritis and senility to give a rat's ass about being ashamed of my ink!

Age is a state of mind

Another fine mess

Oh, Amazon, how you disappoint me. Did you really think people would just roll over and say nothing? Even the authors whose books you are physically affecting?

Amazon rank. A new phrase for fuck-uppery.

Hmm, so far I've only seen it (and read about it) on Amazon.com. I wonder if it affects .co.uk and the other world-wide sites?

The easy way out

It's hard for me to fathom the reasoning behind suicide. I understand certain situations, the ones in which abuse and terror can weigh on a soul so heavily that the only way out, the only way free, is to choose death. I have never been in that situation, so I can't begin to try and understand.

But suicide as a method of fleeing one's problems, leaving behind people whose lives will be devastated - that's something different. I've thought about it at the darkest times of my life, yes; a glib statement, I'm sure, to those who have been deep in the thrall of that compulsion, but true nonetheless. Anecdotal evidence is so passé, after all.

MadCat has tried, twice, and the only reason he failed was because the pills he took just didn't have the effect he thought they would, the effect for which they were designed. I've never been a TLE, I've suffered depression but not the deep, black pools of self-doubt with which he and Ferret have wrestled, the urge to end it all and remove themselves as obstacles from the paths of those they love, the conviction that doing so will suddenly make everyone else's lives better.

We went to a colleague's husband's funeral yesterday. They had been together for 30 years; he killed himself - shot himself - on the eve of her birthday. My initial reaction was - and to some extent, still is - that it was an incredibly selfish thing to have done. He left behind a 20-year-old son who hero-worshipped his father and a wife who loved and supported him through the trials and tribulations of the past few years, from being retrenched to breaking a hip to watching his new business suffer through the economic crisis.

I can understand the worry, the concern, the embarrassment of failure for not being the breadwinner as men are supposed to be, especially in our super-macho South African society. I can see MadCat's concern as he worries about the past six months of retrenchment, the past 18 months of being in and out of work, slowly depleting his savings and financial backups until here we sit, relying on one salary and struggling almost beyond our capabilities.

But I can't understand what he hoped to gain from killing himself, I can't understand what it is he thought would make life better for his wife and son. Suicide - automatically no life insurance payout, especially something as final as shooting oneself, no accidental overdoses here. So there she sits, without her helpmate, without the one she thought she could lean on, soon to be struggling even more as she tries to keep a roof over their heads on a salary lower than mine, struggling with the guilt and the grief and the anger and loss. The betrayal.

MadCat has often turned to me over the past two years, and told me that I've been the only thing that's kept him here, kept him alive. Now that he's back on his meds, it's becoming less likely that he'll feel the urge, or that he'll ever get to that point again. I have been depressed, but not to the extent of being medicated for it, so I'm not fully cognisant of his reasoning, or lack thereof, for as he often tells me, his logic is not the same as everyone else's. I try to understand, but I don't fully grasp the despair.

All I know is that, no matter how much I try to understand, no matter how much I support him, if he were to leave me in such a fashion, his memory would forever be tainted in my mind with the shadow of coward. I know it's a harsh indictment, I know I'm generalising, but in so many cases, especially the running away from one's problems - I feel it's cowardly. It's selfish. It's the easy way out.

It's so much harder facing up to the things that make one want to cower in the corner, hide away from the world, be taken care of. You know the clichés; you know it's a tough life, for all its beauty. This life is not for sissies. So yes, to me, it's a weakness to have done what C did.

I talked to Candlewick last night, I found out the horrors of her childhood, of what was done to her for so many years and how she reacted by turning to the wild side in a desperate bid to prove that she was worthless and thus deserved what she'd been put through. She went through things that would have made strong men weep. And yet she lived; she tested herself with a razor, considered the possibility, and decided to live instead. I told her I was proud to be her friend, I was amazed at the person she is, that she has become, in the face of the terror with which she lived for 25 years. I couldn't find the words to say it properly, to tell her how much she means to me, how wonderful she is with her lightheartedness and gaiety, her love and warmth and strength and encouraging nature (and the way she's such a competitive, sore loser).

I say to MadCat, too, how proud I am of him for pushing through, for being optimistic in the face of his crushing despair, for trying and trying even when things go wrong, putting on the best face he can and just being the odd, offbeat, kind and loving and crazy person that he is. The preacher said yesterday that South African men don't talk about their problems, they keep things to themselves and let them fester. I'm so glad that MadCat and I have a non-traditional relationship, that we do and say things to each other that would make a "normal" run screaming for the hills, that we can tell each other anything, no matter how disturbing. It's the only way I've been able to keep track of what he's going through, of when the danger is near, of when I need to be firm and let him know that any suicide attempt would be grearded with anger and grief, yes, but also with a measure of contempt, because damn it all, I've made it this far, I've struggled and fought, and I want someone who is worthy of my struggles, who is worthy of my time, who is a man and not a coward, who faces up to his problems with me right there.

I grieve for my friend and her loss, I grieve for her son, I am sorry that her husband is gone, but he's fine wherever he is now, he took the easy way out and for that, I don't feel an ounce of sympathy.

You're not the boss of me

So I'm a bit late, but then I've never claimed to be the most punctual of beasts. Anyway, all the hoo-ha about Valentine's. I just don't get it. Teddies and choccies and cards and pink and mushiness ... why?

Hey, I got my share of V-day cards back in the day. And last year, it was pretty nice to celebrate it with MadCat, given that he's never received a V-day card before, or had anyone with whom to celebrate it. So it was a little milestone, and a little important. This year, though, we're both back to our normal feelings about the day.

Which, to sum it up, are: "Blech."

Personally, I think it's just that I don't like being told what to do. And the looks of horror when people asked what we were planning, and we both said "Not much," just made us even more determined not to do what society expects.

Hey, we both prefer staying in on weekends, and cooking heaps of comfort food, sitting at the dining room table instead of slouching in front of the TV (not that we have one), and spending time together. Stupid pink and hearts and crap mean nothing to us. Or rather, stupid pink and hearts mean trying to fit in with the rest of society. And that's just not us.

Of course, it helped that the stove and oven burned out, and that MadCat had to take the thing apart, and that the giant pork roast we had barely fit into the tiny oven in Ferret's cottage (one of the better buys I have ever made). And that we ate dinner somewhere around 10pm.

All in all, a typical day for us. Wouldn't have wanted it any different.

Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God | World news | The Guardian

Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God | World news | The Guardian

Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."

Oh, Sir David Attenborough, how I do love you.

And how I do love the virulent hate displayed by creationists who feel their opinion is being ignored. So much milk of human kindness, so much brotherly love, so much behaving as Jesus would!

"They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."

Says it all about our so-tolerant brethren, doesn't it?

Battle for little girl, 3, rages on

News - Front Page: Battle for little girl, 3, rages on

Justice bosses have been left embarrassed about their costly bungling of an American man's child abduction claims against his South African wife.

But the justice department is unrepentant about its failure to take the American's three-year-old daughter away from her mother, whom the little girl has lived with in South Africa for more than two years, and send her to an uncertain future in America.

This really gets my goat. Isn't the Family Advocate supposed to be looking after the child's best interests? How could they be prepared to send her off to parts unknown, to someone who hasn't seen her more than twice in two years, without even bothering to check how she'll be travelling there?

In addition to ordering that the Family Advocate pay a hefty legal costs bill for its urgent bid to take "Jenny" away from her mother, Van Oosten criticised Family Advocate Renay Kathawaroo for ...

Giving little or no attention to how "Jenny" would be transported back to the US, should the Family Advocate succeed in its application.

Unbelievable! Not only should the judge be applauded for his attack on their incompetence, this "Advocate" should be charged with child abuse for his attempts to ruin this child's life in a bid to exercise his power incorrectly!

Does gingerism remain the last acceptable prejudice? | Life and style | The Guardian

Does gingerism remain the last acceptable prejudice? | Life and style | The Guardian

Why do so many seemingly decent people - the type who would hate to be considered prejudiced - think gingism is perfectly acceptable?

Why indeed? I don't understand such nonsense - as a child, I was always envious of those lucky children with flaming red hair, freckles or not. And why is it that, in a world of gingism, so many people dye their hair bright red?

There are few as beautiful as Moosquared or Dylan, and I fondly remember the days when my own hair had more than a hint of red in the sun. A pity it darkened as I aged.

Redheads rule! People are just damn jealous.

Take note

Family and friends, Ryan Tomorrow says everything I'd like you to keep in mind when I tell you I'm getting divorced. Please pay attention to his Holiday Guide to Talking About Exes

That is all.