Spontaneous Musings

At least it was a pretty day - mild, sunny, not humid, in the 70s this evening, and 60s this morning. So not a bad walk to and from the trains.

But commuting would be easier if less people -- the subway was delayed on the way home, so as a result kind of crowded when I boarded, so much so that I jumped to another car. (The car I was in had lots of people too, but it wasn't packed at least. I'm dreading the fall - and hoping we stick to the hybrid schedules - which seem to benefit managers more than they do us. Plus side of the pandemic on subways and trains? Less passengers, cleaner, and not as noisy - people talk less.)

I'm sleepy. Dosed on the train ride to work and home. Also the book I'm currently reading isn't thrilling me, instead the books I've been writing off and on - kept jumping into my head wanting attention. That's not happened in a while. I may go back and edit the treatise I wrote - which is disguised as a romance novel. [Except I suck at editing - I have a tendency to add stuff, instead of deleting it - which may explain why I enjoy editing far more than I should?] Or the science fiction novel I was working on and almost done with prior to 2019. But I write so much at work - I'm not sure I'm up to it. I suppose I could give up blogging in this journal or playing on a fanboard in favor of it - but where's the fun in that?

**

Crazy Workplace

People for the most part wear masks on the trains and indoors in NYC. Outside, it's a toss-up. Some do. Some don't. On the train platforms? Same.

Meeting went well - considering the silly consultant sent me the questions at 4pm on Sunday, and I had to coordinate answers this morning. I think I surprised him - I got the answers so quickly. I honestly think the consultant was employing a couple of delaying tactics. But crazy org really wants this completed before the end of September. Also, I'm not certain the consultant understands what we're asking of them - honestly? I don't blame them.

Anyhow, after the meeting, I went to consult Breaking Bad in the conference room. He's co-opted it. It is covered with paper. It's just an extension of his office now. Every spare surface is covered with paper. Including the chairs, and some of the floor.

Me: Uh..I was about to ask what this is about - but I'm not sure I want to know.

Breaking Bad just looks at me with this kind of lost expression. He looks like a snowy owl buried in paper. His hair is white, his beard is scraggly, his glasses give him an owlish look. And he looks kind of buried. I felt sorry for him. New agency may kill him.

***

The US vs. The Corona Virus

( New York vs. COVID )

( Governor's Email )

Everyone Else"

* The governor or Louisiana reinstated an indoor mask mandate, as did San Francisco and several surrounding Bay Area counties. [It's only a matter of time before we do - too.]

* The Republican governors of South Carolina and Ohio both said they would not renew public health mandates like mask-wearing and social distancing, even as their states continue to battle a raging pandemic.

* Senator Lindsey Graham said he has a breakthrough Covid infection. [Is it too much to ask that he die of it? Yes, I guess so. Can it at least be a horrible case with long-term effects?]

* Home Depot, SoulCycle and other businesses tightened pandemic restrictions. [Interesting.]

* Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted cases would rise, but said lockdowns were unlikely. [That's because no one wants to lock down the economy again.]

* Provincetown, Mass., thought it was safe to return to prepandemic partying. It wasn’t. ( excerpt )

* Oh, a woman who fled NYC to the Conneticut Suburbs last year, is struggling to make new friends so went out to dinner with her neighbor from across the street. Only to discover the neighbor wouldn't get vaccinated due to fears about side-effects. The woman has a newborn. She was furious, because the neighbor knew she had a newborn. Now they can't be friends.

[If you've not gotten the vaccine, you should get one. The side-effects are far less likely to kill you than either COVID or the vaccinated folks who are fed up with your sorry ass, and verging on homicidial. 70% of NY State wants to kick 24% of NY State that refuses to get vaccinated across the Atlantic and back at the moment. I thought I was annoyed, in the last two weeks I've encountered rage that puts mine to shame.]

The World vs. COVID

*Meanwhile the UK is wisely looking into a booster shot, which it will roll out once a year along with the flu shot.

* And with COVAX behind in distributing doses to the disadvantaged countries around the world, the Delta Variant is on the rise everywhere.

* Thailand is extending strict coronavirus measures to more regions of the country.

* In France, demonstrations against the country’s vaccine requirements surged for a third straight weekend.

*Canada fined two travelers nearly $20,000 each for providing false vaccination documents.

***

In other news...In a rare weekend session, the Senate finalized a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. We’re combing through the 2,702-page bill for details.

The legislation includes billions of dollars to better prepare the country for global warming, in what could be the largest investment in climate resilience in American history. Amtrak would get $66 billion in new funding, which would be the largest investment in passenger rail since it was created.

That's great news. We really need better train service in this country. Trains are messy, true, but they are the least messy.

**

What else to talk about? I know there's something but I'm drawing a blank.
Life isn't fair? But you already knew that. Matt Damon got in trouble with his daughter for using the word "fag" at the dinner table - they got into an argument, she left the table, wrote a long essay about it, gave it to him, and he was so filled with remorse that he chose never to use it again and decided to tell the world.

I think he might re-think that decision soon. Social Media was far less forgiving than his daughter, and far less ...complimentary of his decision to brag about not doing it ever again publicly. (Apparently they didn't know he'd been using it - and now, well, that cat is out of the bag isn't it?)
( Read more... )
I don't know, maybe it's just me? But social media and the internet has become increasingly touchy about words.

I get it. I do. Often we can ignore the nasty oral slang folks say on the street and around us daily, but when it is in print - it's hard to look away. And if you are like me, some words just make you cringe. I know the word "faggot" always has. I really despise that word. It's like nails on a chalkboard kind of word. Rhymes with Maggot. Ugh. I would not mind having that word removed from our current lingo or vernacular.

But, I also live in New York City - so I hear that word and words like it all the time. New Yorkers love to throw all sorts of angry words and insults in your face - mainly just to see how you will react. Over time you learn not to. It's decisively a New Yorker thing or so I've discovered. I think they get off on shocking people? (I don't use them and work to block them out.) And I've heard them a lot less in the last two years, because I'm not commuting that much, there's less people, not as much chatting around me, and only five to six people in the office. Today, I think it was five. But prior to the pandemic - I'd hear fag, fuck, motherfucker, cunt, bitch, nigger, fucking niggah, son of a bitch, faggot, fuckhead, shithead, and various combinations of all of the above on a weekly basis. I used to play a game - to see how many new curse words and insults I could learn in the space of one subway ride or walk down the street at work.

After a while, you learn how to block it out. Lando was horrific at times. I finally took a page from cubicle mate and invested in some Bose head-phones, which I wear constantly - the cancel out background noise and I listen to music.

( a discourse on cringe-inducing insults/slang and swear words )
Words can feel like swords if used inappropriately. We all need to mindful of their use, I think. But I also think we need to be kinder towards those who screw up with their usage from time to time. Everyone is human, no one is perfect - if people were, we wouldn't have climate change and a pandemic among other things. It's best to gently wean folks off of it. It's programming. That's all. And changing programming requires work and time. Being cruel and judgemental - doesn't change the programming it just digs it in deeper. I think that's the problem with social media sometimes - people forget they have to be kind to everyone, not just those they like or are like-minded.

I also keep thinking of that saying people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?

Okay enough for tonight. No pictures, sorry, you'll just have to do without. ;-)

Quodlibetical, a. - Not restrained to a particular subject; discussed for curiousity or entertainment

Quahog, n. A large species of clam.

The above more or less explains most of my livejournal entries. Except for possibly this one, which is more about curiousity and not so much on the entertainment.

Today, we did diversity training. I've done this several times now - twice in companies, at least three times in school, plus had a legal class on it. And had a school chum do a sociological study on it. We both majored in English Lit. She minored in sociology, I minored in cultural anthropology. We had all sorts of interesting debates about minorities and diversity in school. She focused on statistical makeup, I focused on getting to know people and understand different religions and cultures. Basically one was quantitative analysis and the other qualitative analysis. As a result, her conclusion was that our college was woefully non-diverse and mine was it was wonderfully diverse.

Anywho. In the class we took this little statistics quiz and here's some interesting stats that they threw at us. (For the purposes of the stat's below, nation = US. This isn't global.)

1. 75% of all working-age American Women are in the labor market. 47.6% comprise the labor pool of the NYC and Long Island area. 15.5% are in my company.

2. Minorities comprise 48% of the labor pool of Long Island and New York City area.

3. The average age of the nation's workforce is 40 and projected to rise to 41 by the year 2010.

4. Immigrants makeup 14.4 % of Long Island's population. (Yes, I thought it was more than that too.)

5. 10% of the percentage of the nation's population is gay, lesbian or bi-sexual.

6. 20% of America's workforce is disabled as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

7. There are 54 million persons with disabilities in the US.

8. 35.6% of all cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2008 alleged discrimination/harrassment based on 1) race (35.6 %), 2)retailation (34.3%) and 3) sexual harrassment/gender bias (29.7%)

9. 4.6% of all cases filed with the EEOC in 2008 were found to have some legal merit.
( somewhat rambling bit about the class and somewhat personal. )

[ETA: Upon re-reading, I've realized this post would have been a lot more effective if I didn't have so many typos. Going back to try and correct them now. Otherwise it is just really amusing. I laughed when I re-read it.]

Strained my back this weekend - severly enough that I was immobile on Saturday and completely off the computer. Put heat on everything and took "aleve" or naproxin, which helped greatly. Also did exercises. Will do some more shortly, and put more heat on everything.

I tend to be pretty laid back when comes to syntax and word choice, not to mention grammar. I seldom correct people. Mostly, because that would be hypocritical, considering how many mistakes I make. BUT there are two words that bug me in how they've been used or rather frightenly misused. This has been bugging me for the last six years now, ever since a rather dumb fan argument about misogyny on a fanboard - and I've been restraining myself from kicking people all that time. [Oh in case you are wondering, why I feel motivated to talk about this now - the urge sprung from a discussion with a close friend Sunday night, who proceeded to use both words wrong repeatedly. Ugh.]

Misogyny. It means "HATRED" of women. Not mere dislike, not frustration. Hatred. And it can be felt by any gender - it is no more gender specific than misanthropy. It does not mean patriarchial. Or controlling. Making love to a life-size female doll does not equal misogyny. Reading playboy magazines does not equal misogyny. Drawing women in skimpy bikinis is not misogyny. Trying to make a woman love you does not equal misogyny. Obsessive stalking is not misogyny. Hell date-rape does not always equal misogyny nor does rape for that matter. Anymore than killing and/or torturing a man equals misanthropy. The word loses its meaning if you overuse it or if you use it interchangably with patriarchial or patronizing or misuse it to mean anything that strikes you as creepy or negative in regards to how women are treated. When a man demeans a woman, or treats her like a child, a possession, a plaything, an object, or a doll - this is patronizing perhaps, but not misogyny. Spike and Angel are not misogynistic. They didn't hate women. They wanted to control and use women, not the same thing. Patronistic, perhaps. Dean and Sam on Supernatural are NOT misogynistic, chauvinistic, but not misogynistic - if they were they would not save women. Nor are the writers - or women would not be saved on the show and the mother would not have been shown in a positive manner. They are chauvinistic. Joss Whedon is not misogynistic - if he was he wouldn't have created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He may however be a bit on the patronistic, controlling side or what we women like to call "chauvinistic" or male chauvinism - "the prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's own group". We live in a very chauvinistic society. I've experienced both, trust me, there is a difference. A rather big one. I can deal with chauvinistic behavior, misogyny, pure misogyny - not so much.

Jealousy. This does not mean coveting your neighbors goods. It does not mean wanting what someone else has. Nor does it mean wishing you had their sucess, their boyfriend, husband, wife or things. Jealousy - means that you are afraid they are going to take something you love away from you. Jealousy can arise from feelings of envy or bitterness in rivalry, but it is primarily about the fear of losing one's position or affection. In other words - Buffy is jealous of Willow's power - in that she is afraid Willow will take her position. But Willow is NOT jealous of Buffy's power, she is envious of it. Buffy is the one in power. Or Spike is jealous of Angel's relationship with Buffy or Angel is jealous of Spike's relationship with Buffy - both are possible. Xander is ENVIOUS of Spike/Angel's relationship with Buffy. Not jealous. He doesn't have the same relationship. You are envious of your friend's marriage. Your friend is jealous of your relationship with her husband. People tend to use these words interchangably, to the point in which I wonder if they know what they mean.

Off to bed. All bad-moody. I blame the period and the bad back. All around, icky day.