Let the Festivities Begin!

I have finished grading *and* sent off one of my book reviews. The other is due in early February, but I have made a good start on it.

No classes until January 17. Nothing to do now but drink coffee and write my novel. It is bliss.

Links

You're getting links because I'm grading final exams and working on two book reviews whose deadlines are fast approaching. I should clearly be spending less time on the internet, but.

Gifts for the MAGA in your life. These are all apparently real, and I'm not sure whether that's hilarious or just really sad.

Fox News attacks a Minnesota teacher. How dare she say that students are indoctrinated? That's their job!

I love this poem.

This is long, but makes a good point about moral panics.

Cars used to be the leading killer of children. Now it's guns. That's because we made laws about cars (seatbelt laws, car seat laws, rules about how they were built, rules about driving drunk or speeding in school zones, licensing laws) whereas all we do with guns is sell more of them.

Mike Pence wants to make it legal to kill police officers entering your house illegally. I mean, that at least fits the parameters of the Second Amendment, I guess.

Lol:

It's Exam Week!

We've officially launched into final exam week. Since I'm only give that one exam (at eight a.m.), this mostly means, for me, heaps of grading. Final papers are due in all five classes, and the final exam in the Global Lit class. Ugh. I hate grading.

Meanwhile we had a good dinner party. The dump cake was a big hit. I sent the remains home with Charger, something I am now regretting.

Oh, and the boyfriend did indeed make deviled eggs. They were excellent. Next time I'll get a photo.

Heading into Exam Week

I'm only giving one exam this semester, and it's at fucking dawn on Tuesday. (Exams before 10:00 a.m. are the real oppression.) For my other classes, students are turning in big papers or portfolios, depending on which class it is -- portfolios for fiction workshop, papers for Comp I.

Meanwhile we're having Dr. Skull's birthday celebration today: chicken schnitzel, asparagus, mashed potatoes, chocolate pie, babka, and a dump cake I am making especially for Uncle Charger and me. I might get the kid's boyfriend to make deviled eggs again. He made them for our last dinner party and they were excellent. Everyone is coming, including my SIL. She's coming down for Hanukkah in a couple of weeks too. (I think I need to give her a blog name.)

So anyway I'm spending this morning cleaning up and making dump cake. I should get to it.

Weirdness on the Right

I'm not reading many conservative blogs or webpages these days, because they're all so unhinged they make me wince with second-hand embarrassment, but here are a few talking points that are boiling up from the Right.

I've seen a couple of people on the Right predicting a "hard winter," and asserting that America is going to be starving by spring. I have no idea where this is coming from. I know that on at least one blog (a very odd one) it's been asserted that the "Marxist Left" is keeping people from making or distributing fertilizer, because progressives are evil and love death, apparently; so maybe it's part of that?

Over on Twitter, conservatives have moved on from how evil it was for Biden to work a deal that got Brittney Griner out of a Russian prison to claiming Griner is actually a man. (To be fair, it's mostly TERFs doing this, but however much TERFs claim they are feminists, they are actually gender essentialists, which is to say, conservatives.)

And this, which I first noticed coming from Rod Dreher and wossname, up in Idaho -- the idea that fascism is necessary to save America from the non-Christians. Apparently the Right only believes in originalism so long as they're winning elections and the culture wars. When they start losing -- because most Americans don't like bigotry, actually -- why, now it's time to ditch the Constitution and the law. America is going to be a Christian nation, or else.

They're also very upset by the Marriage Equality bill. This is a little odd, given how many of them assert earnestly that the GOP would never overthrow Obergefell, why, that's settled law! (Same thing they asserted earnestly about Roe V. Wade, if you recall.)

There was a story in the Guardian about the mountain lion who lives in a wilderness preserve above LA, and how the fact that the lion is now attacking small dogs and scaring residents. The wildlife experts explain that the lion is stressed by the smallness of his habitat and his growing age (he's very old for a mountain lion), that these attacks are the result of stress. Not sure why this made me think of Conservatives. 

Holy shit. A Republican just started crying on the floor of Congress begging them to vote against protecting marriage equality. pic.twitter.com/8l2n2epuQP

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) December 8, 2022

Links

I'm enjoying the comments on this post at Unfogged.

This fake crisis from the Right is also funny -- I mean, as Roy Edroso pointed out, previously the Right was wailing because Biden hadn't gotten her out of the Russian prison. Someone else in the thread points out this same pivot happened back with Obama and Bergdahl. 

Though I do like Pharyngula's take.

This is good news: The Marriage Equality bill got through the House. Some bipartisan support, even.

For all y'all Wordle fans, here's Hurdle, which is frankly more fun.

If you want to feel depressed about the state of the world, just look at the people replying to this tweet who seem genuinely upset that she's no longer being held in a Russian penal colony. https://t.co/t7yqnFWAie

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 8, 2022

Overbooked

I have so many things I have to do in the next week. Some of them are things I want to do (dinner with family, for instance, or writing reviews for various science fiction magazines) and some are things I could do without (grading papers, exams, meeting with disgruntled students) but all of them are adding stress to my already over-stressed system.

Honestly, all I want out of life is day after day with nothing planned.

Can't I just sit here and drink my coffee and write novels?

The Senate Goes Blue

On the one hand, it's Georgia, so the fact that Warnock was elected is definitely a move in the right direction.

On the other hand, 48.6% of people in Georgia voted for someone more incompetent than Trump. 

Giving to Charity

I donate to my local foodbank, to ACLU, to Planned Parenthood, and to donor's choose, in roughly that order. (That is, monthly to my local foodbank and the ACLU, to Planned Parenthood and donors choose when I have some extra money.)

Nicole and Maggie have a post on places to give!

Other suggestions welcome!

Birthdays and Hanukkah

Dr. Skull and the kid's boyfriend have the same birthday, December 8. 

Because Dr. Skull had lingering trauma from when he was a kid, and his birthday and Hanukkah coincided so often, he insists every year on having a separate party for his birthday. This year we're holding it on December 10, since that's a Saturday and the kids are both off.

Then Hanukkah runs this year from December 18 through the 26, so we'll probably hold the Hanukkah party (Latkes and corned beef) on the 24.

You see what this means. Yes, it means I must clean the house TWICE in two weeks.

On the other hand, latkes.

Extremely Cool

 There's also version aimed at people with more scientific knowledge:

All I Wanted to Do Was Read a Few Books

I'm at the point in the semester where I hate my life: grading season. Yes.

Ten percent of my students do wonderfully, but honestly they would do wonderfully without me. Ten percent are hopeless, and I spent 90% of my time working with them. The middle 80%, the ones I could help, end of getting short shrift because of that bottom ten percent. Honestly it's just depressing.

Why did I become an English professor? What was I thinking?

(This is a rant. Don't take me seriously.)

Damage Done by Transphobes

My kid is an adult now, and safe from this, but that's not the case for thousands of kids.

When my kid was in his teens, he was terrified and miserable. We didn't know what was wrong. The therapists didn't know what was wrong. It was one of the scariest times of my life, and worse for him, I'm sure. 

If amidst all that, the state government had sent a social worker to investigate us, with the implied threat that my child could taken from our home, I honestly don't know if my kid would have survived that. 

I'm the mother of a transgender child. Last spring Greg Abbott ordered CPS to investigate parents like me for child abuse. A caseworker came to my home, interrogated my children individually & alone, & kept our investigation open for MONTHS despite no evidence of harm or abuse🧵

— Amber Briggle (she/her) (@mrsbriggle) November 29, 2022

My kid is so much better now. There's still residual trauma left from what he went through in those years, but once he -- and we -- understood that he was trans, things started getting better almost at once. We found a therapist that worked with trans kids. We started him on HRT. We got him top surgery. Each one of those things helped him immensely. 

Why is it the business of the state to stop families from getting the medical care they need for their children? I mean, these are the same people who don't want the state to compel them to vaccinate their children. So they're opposed to state control of them; but they are pro-state control of others?

I'm kidding. Of course I understand why the same people can be anti-vax, and yet for state control of trans kids. 

These are hierarchal people. Their entire worldview is built around the idea that some people should be in control of what happens, and other people should be controlled. 

Some people have power. Those people should not be restricted in any way. They should be allowed to do what they will. If they want to carry guns in grocery stores and university classrooms, if they want to occupy state land, if they want to storm the capitol, they should not be opposed, or even criticized. The slightest infringement on their actions is an outrage.

Other people exist to be acted upon, and those people should be closely watched and fenced about with restrictions. Any act they commit that is not 100% in compliance with the approval of those in power -- like, for instance, wearing a mask; or selling loose cigarettes; or calling their child by the name and pronouns the child prefers -- these acts must be harshly opposed, and harshly punished. 

That worldview is the very basis of conservative thought, and it's why conservativism today is such a poisonous force in the world.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” -- Frank Wilhoit

Gym Rat

According to this blog, we've been going to the gym since sometime in May. That's seven months now. I have actual muscles, which is nice; and we're up to an hour a day, three or four days a week (depending on how busy the week is -- we only went twice Thanksgiving week.

There are definitely days when I don't want to go work out. But I always feel better afterwards, so I remind myself of that, and off we go.

Being a member of a gym does help. It's partly that I've spent the money so I should use the gym, but also because all the exercise machines are there. It's somehow easier to exercise if I have machines available.

End of the Holidays

We took the kids back up the mountain today, and visited with my sister-in-law as well as my nephew, his wife, and the new baby. We ate some excellent gumbo, cooked by SIL.

Now we're home again. I have a ton of grading to do, and a final exam study sheet to write. All I want to do is read science fiction novels and write my own novel.

Soon it will be winter break, though. Counting the days.