Adoptive Dads recently mentioned a new law in Italy prohibiting prospective adoptive parents from trying to choose the ethnicity of their children. Kind of leads one to wonder just how diverse a nation Italy is…

I mentioned in a comment there it might be a good law for a country which is diverse, but i can’t imagine it being a good idea in the US because we still have too many racist communities. The community i currently live in is a perfect example. Bad place to raise a non-white child.

So yes, if i were to start the adoption process today, living here, i would ask for a white child. I prefer to avoid putting any child in a situation like a non-white one would live in here.

The next logical question, though, is how good is it for a white child to be raised in a racist community? How non-racist can a child become when he’s raised among adults who consider racism to be acceptable? Of course, we can’t go so far as to turn ‘you can’t adopt because your neighbours are unethical’ into law, but it is yet another issue to deal with.

Related posts:

1. the this-research-sucks update

I’m also a sentient life form. I have this ridiculous liberal notion God gave me a brain and must therefore mean for me to use it once in a while, rather than automatically agreeing with the more Fundamentalist members of my religion.

Yeah, i know. Blasphemy. This is what happens when you allow equal rights. Oh, wait…

God created everyone equally! Except for you; you don’t matter.

It wasn’t too long ago Fundies still believed anyone with dark skin was ‘marked’. The most famous, but hardly only, example is the Mormons. I learned at least three different variations on this as a Christian student, always with the disclaimer ‘Of course, nobody believes such things anymore; we know God created everyone equal!’

Everyone. Even girls?

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent – 1 Timothy 2:11-12

Note the ‘i’ here is the apostle Paul – not Jesus, not God. ‘But Paul was being inspired by God, so it totally counts.’ Totally.

It could be argued Paul was referring more to a woman’s lack of education than anything else, a common issue then. The counter-argument is something like, ‘Well, Paul never specifically mentioned education, so he must have meant women can’t lead.’ Hurray for literalism.

I suppose i can take some comfort in the knowledge women aren’t the only ones mistreated by Fundamentalists.

You’re Catholic. I’m Protestant. It’ll never work.

I disagree with the Manhattan Declaration to start with and i don’t put much stock in petitions anyway, so i’m not signing the Manhattan Declaration regardless of who wrote it.

But i’m not signing it specifically because i disagree with it. There’s plenty of other Christians* who agree with it wholeheartedly but refuse to sign anyway:

I care deeply about these issues, but I cannot in conscience sign on with those with whom I have fundamental disagreements on the nature of the Gospel. – Alistair Begg

Because, y’know. It was written and signed by a combination of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox.

I should note, for those who haven’t read it, one of the issues in the Manhattan Declaration is abortion. Seriously? You can’t sign a petition to stop baby-killing if members of the ‘wrong’ religion are involved? If going to Mass would stop murders, i’d be there every time the church was open.

What are they going to do when an atheist comes up with a pro-life bill? Is all the pro-life marching, the attempts to convince non-believers life begins at conception, the picketing at abortion clinics, going to be for nothing? ‘Sorry, i can’t sign this petition. But i’m sure all the aborted babies who will never have a chance at life will be very understanding when their little souls get to Heaven and God explains all the religious implications.’

And they wonder why they have so much trouble getting people to agree with them on important issues.

ZOMG, we are SOOOO persecuted!

It seems any pro-Christian movement nowadays puts undue emphasis on ‘persecution of Christians.’ Pro-life? ‘The government might force a Christian doctor to perform abortions!’ Anti-gay? ‘Ministers might be forced to perform gay weddings!’

The Manhattan Declaration is a perfect example: it’s half ‘save the babies and stop the gays’, half thinly-veiled whining about the perceived persecution of Christianity.** Now, the pro-life bit, i can get behind; i disagree with pro-life legislation (despite being pro-life myself; another example where thinking too much gets me in trouble), but i can respect people who think they’re saving lives. Anti-gay-marriage loses me a bit, as i don’t see how a couple getting married affects anything, but it’s preached against in the Bible so i can see Christians disagreeing with it. It’s the third part of the Declaration, where they whine about how supporters of abortion and homosex are trying to ‘eliminate conscience clauses’, (and, by extension, ‘[trampling] upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments’) which completely throws me.

Yes, there’s been a situations where a Fundamentalist’s rights and a non-Fundie’s rights have been at odds. And sometimes the Fundamentalist has lost. Sorry, that’s what happens when everyone has a chance at equality, instead of just members of a certain group. ‘People we disagree with are equal’ shouldn’t mean ‘blame it on Teh Gay Agenda!’, right?

Well, bad stuff is all the (gay/Muslim/atheist)’s fault, anyway.

Westboro Baptist Church has turned this into an art form, though i think using them to prove a point constitutes a violation of Godwin’s law. Regardless, ‘God is punishing someone who disagrees with us’ has been used to explain virtually every tragedy in the world, from the murder of non-Christian individuals to Hurricane Katrina.

Massive weather problems i’m willing to accept. Murder, though? ‘A Wiccan’s been murdered! Proof God disagrees with Wiccans!’ What, God forced the murderer to kill the Wiccan? So the murderer didn’t have free will? Does that mean the Wiccan didn’t have the free will required to choose eir own religion?

Besides, Christians are affected by tragedies as often as anyone else. By this logic, Christianity isn’t the right religion. Quick, someone go to the senior centre, find an octogenarian who managed to spend a minimum of twenty-nine years exposed to no suffering whatsoever and spent the past forty-five years teaching how to end suffering, and ask what his religion is. Because obviously he’s doing it right.

Oh, wait: ‘When Christians suffer, it’s just God testing our faith, like in the Book of Job.’

The ‘loving’ God who sends the unfaithful to Hell is purposely doing His best to make more people unfaithful and thus send more people there? No. Just, no. Try again.

Well, i don’t know why it happened. Let’s just say ‘God works in mysterious ways’ and pretend it’s relevant.

Here’s a hint: if ‘i don’t know’ would work, it’s a better explanation than ‘i don’t know, but God must have had something to do with it!’

If God granted free will, then people pull all kinds of crap on their own. People, not God, cause drive-by shootings, drug wars, and child abuse. (If God didn’t grant free will, then He does all the sadistic shit on His own and we can drop the pretence of Him being ‘loving’.)

I’ve been obsessed with adoption research lately. One theme which i’ve seen a good bit lately is adoptees who wish they hadn’t been adopted. Not necessarily because they dislike their adoptive families or culture, but because being adopted means they lost everything else and no matter how much they love their new families, the loss still sucks. The Fundamentalist response is ‘Well, God meant for you to be in this awesome new family! So your sucky loss is just His ‘mysterious way’ of getting you here!’ Ew. I much prefer Tonggu Mama’s way of describing it:

God allows for suffering because, without free will, our choices to follow Him or not follow Him would mean very little. Because of this, I believe that yes, God worked to bring the Tongginator into our family… but… BUT… I believe that we were quite definitely His plan B for her life. – Tonggu Mama

And that? Is everything i want in talking to Christians. ‘God controls the universe without being a dick about it.’

So basically, today… i’m arguing with the Fundies.

And by extension i’m arguing with the people who say i’m not good enough for God. I’m arguing with the people who care more about religious politics than their own morals. I’m arguing with the people who claim persecution while blaming others for all the world’s problems. I’m arguing with anyone who can’t form an argument which makes sense according to their own twisted logic, let alone mine.

Yeah… i’m in a bit of an argumentative mood today.

*I found nine in about three seconds of Googling, including one who thinks it’s a New Age plot.

**As per my copy-paste job into a word processing document, which put the life and marriage sections combined at 2 556 words and the religious liberty section at 1 086 words. As there were mentions of religious liberty in the life and marriage sections, it’s probably actually far more skewed.

No related posts.

I’ve mostly given up on this, for now, as i have too many other little projects taking up all my mental energy. But! I nonetheless managed to have a wee bit of lucidity last night/this morning. And it was totally awesome and very much confirmed this is something i want to be able to do on a regular basis.

…actually, it was kind of lame, as far as lucid dreams go. Basically i realised i was dreaming and mildly freaked out: ‘Wait. This is weird. Like not-quite-possible weird. Am i dreaming? Whoah, yeah, i’m dreaming. Okay. Okay! Whoah. Don’t panic. Panic means i wake up. Um. Um. Um. Okay. But i can’t just keep doing what i’m doing ‘cause then i’ll forget i’m dreaming. Um. Okay. Do something… dreamy. Something dreamy, something dreamy… okay… let’s try flyiOHMYGOD!’
Aaaand of course i (almost) immediately lost all sense of sight (i kept vision long enough to see my bike, which i’d been riding a moment previous, explode. w00t.) and thus was literally flying blind. But i could still feel the little stomach-tingling sense of moving crazy fast. ‘Oooh. I wanna try a flip!’ FLIP. Yeeeesss.

Lasted less than a minute before i woke up but still. Awesomesauce.

No related posts.

My original plan as far as getting piercings over the next three years goes was one new pair of earlobe piercings (for a total of four lobe piercings per ear), and one non-earlobe piercing – either navel or ear cartilage, never did fully decide.

My original plan, of course, was decided before one of my older piercings got crazy infected. Turns out it’s rare-but-possible to scratch the inside of a piercing when changing earrings and re-infect the whole thing even if it’s five damn years old. Needless to say my existing piercings are now getting daily squirts of antibacterial soap, regardless of age.

Tried home-treatment for a while, which at first just made it worse (pro tip: hydrogen peroxide is way too abrasive for pierced skin) and then made it better (yay vinegar) and then it started getting worse again (dammit). Up until then i’d been leaving the earring in so i wouldn’t end up with the hole closing up and sealing the infection in but after reaching the go-to-the-doctor-and-get-some-damn-antibiotics level i decided to leave it out for the weekend. Because it stung demonically every time i wiggled it around while cleaning it and the antibiotics should make it feel better and it TOTALLY wasn’t going to close up in only two days, right?

Yeah. Totally.
On the plus side, i didn’t actually need to worry about the infection being sealed under the skin, due to a nausea-inducing amount of antibiotics, but still. One less piercing for me.

Now i’m debating between the original plan (which now requires re-piercing one of the old ones as well as getting some new ones) or doing something far less symmetrical. When i was in high school i was really leaning towards four piercings per ear, but all lobe piercings on one ear and half-lobe/half-cartilage on the other. Now i’m back down to two piercings in my left ear, i might just go ahead and do that instead.

No related posts.

I think i will go the lazy route and stick with melt-and-pour for any soap-making experiments… i’m far too impatient to try to learn cold-process soap and i’m not too keen on doing anything with hazardous chemicals (yay lye!) in a house with three cats and a pair of birds. And as i don’t plan on ever selling soap, i see no reason to do as much by hand as possible.
I just like the idea of being able to have, say, lemon-scented orange-coloured butterfly-shaped soap if i so desire.

I presume even the simple melt-and-pour method requires a certain amount of learning and trial and error, with regards to things like melting techniques and using the right amount of fragrance and colouring… so… i’m still learning. It still counts.

No related posts.

Moving: Right now i’m mostly focusing on the money issue. I finally sort-of started a beaded jewelry shop on Etsy (i say ‘sort-of’ because my weekend blew up and i only got around to listing one item. and i’m still working out the whole scheduling-my-own-business-around-my-day-job thing. meh.)

Webcomic: Fell off the update wagon a bit. Funny coincidence: the next strip was to be one on Yo’s hibernation patterns. So, yeah, my comic disappears for three weeks and then comes back on a girl who can’t stay awake long enough to do anything.

Happiness Project: Well, i’m still doing stuff with it, but i’ve finished my Month of Working on it Every Day.
I finished up the very-non-calendar-month on Wednesday.
On Friday the cockatiel i’ve had since i was twelve died.
Yeah.
So.
Not very happy, that.
Especially since cockatiels are mad crazy social birds. And i have another cockatiel. And the other cockatiel spent twelve hours shrieking at the top of his lungs in search of his buddy.
I want to be all tearful and say no other bird can ever replace Neelix and Jean-Luc and i will just have to get along without him because it will be ages before i can even consider another bird. But screw that. Jean-Luc was lonely and Jean-Luc is vicious and there’s a difference between ‘total replacement’ and ‘having another gentle bird around’. So as of Saturday there is a shy, sweet, and otherwise non-vicious seven-month-old cockatiel in a cage next to Jean-Luc’s. And Jean-Luc is happy, or at least no longer shrieking from loneliness, and i am happy(ish), and Data the Cat is… well, he’s not happy, he’s actually quite jealous of all the attention baby Wesley is getting. But he’s a cat, he doesn’t do happy without at least an hour of worship to the cat-god involved. But basically everyone involved is much happier than we would be if i didn’t get another bird, so i guess it works out.

Related posts:

1. Happy Funs

I’d like to just take an online course. In part because there’s only two schools i know of around here which offer Russian: my old high school and a uni in Scranton. I doubt my old high school really wants me crashing classes still and it’s really not practical for me to go to Scranton two or three times a week. Meh.

But it’s difficult to choose an online course too, in part because i definitely know far more than could be considered ‘beginner’ but (due to lack of practice if nothing else) am not really comfortable taking an ‘intermediate’ course.

What i need is an online self-paced class which includes a placement exam so i know where to start :P

random other stuff

• i seem to have officially failed in the update-my-blog-once-a-week goal. First official failure, WOOHOO! (see? i really am enthusiastic about my failures. It means i tried. It means i ain’t no wussy. And in this case it also means i no longer need to stress out if it’s Day 7 and i have nothing to say, cause whatever, i already failed the whole every week thing.)

No related posts.

Sit-ups: 45 at a time, 150+ in sets. w00t me.
Screnzy: failed.
Comic: still going.
Happiness Project: also still going.
Bonsai: not dead yet.
Novel: have been ignoring.
Moving: am seriously considering finding a cheap-as-possible hotel to live in until apartments are sorted. City i end up in to be determined by city with cheapest inhabitable rooms.

Related posts:

1. the this-research-sucks update
2. The I-Think-I’m-Doing-Too-Much-At-Once Update

Some randomness:

• Stuff which makes me Feel Good and stuff which makes me Feel Bad are more closely related than i previously realised. Odd.
• There is nothing like tracking the tag ‘happiness’ on Tumblr for random bits of glee. There’s the expected happiness quotes, and happy pictures, and gratitude journal entries, but also sweet touching stories – real, unforced, this-is-how-my-day-went-and-it-was-happy! diary pages. I love it.
• I. Love. Maps. Especially metro maps, apparently. This is the sort of thing i technically knew but which didn’t really get into my head until i started the HP. In the Happiness Project book (which i haven’t actually finished yet, but whatever, i’m working on it…), there’s a section on collections and various reasons they make some people happy. ‘Hm, well, i doubt i’ll start really collecting anything any time soon, but as a wee mental exercise, what kind of things would i collect?’ I do plan on starting a proper knife/sword collection soon, but anything else? Maybe tarot decks? Bonsai trees? Antique books?
  Turns out you can get suggestions for anything on Hunch. Including collections. And OMG MAPS WANT NOW PLZ.
  So much for ‘not starting a collection any time soon.’ Granted, right now my ‘collection’ is all-digital, held together in Vi.sualize.us, but i have a new obsession. And i have no idea how i’m going to go about this, but i want to get together with the genealogists in my family (of which there are surprisingly many) and make some sort of Family Tree-Map. Make me happy. Make the history geeks happy. Win all around!

Related posts:

1. Passports, Trees, and Happiness
2. Weekend Explosions
3. On its way…

In an effort to actually work on a Happiness Project every day, for a (very non-calendar) month, i’ve made a list of Happiness Project tasks to spread out over the next two weeks (day 15 is ‘Re-plan Happiness Project.’ Because i suck at planning things that far in advance, and besides it’s quite likely i’ll come up with whole different happiness-inducing ideas in the next one week, never mind two).

Yesterday was Planning. Today is actually getting around to reading The Happiness Project. Tomorrow is deciding what, exactly, i’m going to use as a ‘happiness toolbox.’

There is an entire Happiness Project Toolbox site, set up by Gretchen Rubin as a sort of add-on to her book and blog, but i’m not sure i’m going to use it. I know full well i wouldn’t use most of it – it’s either stuff i already do, and prefer doing, somewhere else, or it’s stuff i wouldn’t find conducive to my happiness at all (group resolutions?! Introvert alert = not gonna happen. Unless it’s such a ridiculously small group as to make calling it a group almost silly, or so huge as to already have its own movement and website.) I don’t feel the stuff i would use the HPT for is really enough to warrant setting up yet another account on yet another website.

The alternatives are my regular blog, or a Tumblr blog. The former i feel might be a bit unwieldy for this and the latter is… well, it’s not a whole new account, but it is a whole new something i have to set up and maintain and may feel guilty about if i don’t bother with it after my self-imposed Happy Month. Ah well.

I think my favourite happiness commandment of Gretchen’s is ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’ There is no perfect ‘toolbox’ for me, but there’s three perfectly good alternatives. Just gotta grab one.

and other stuff.

So. Goal #80? Renewing my passport?
This is kind of important because a) My passport is my only photo ID. I don’t drive, i never bothered getting a non-drivers-license government-issued ID (well. besides the passport), i never even bothered getting a college ID once i stopped going to a school which outright required it (i’m lazy like that. ‘I have one photo ID. This is enough. I am not going to waste my time bantering about with stuff i don’t need.’) No passport means no pubs, no piercings, no lots of fun things. And b) I still want to go overseas in the near future. Passport thus required.
Now, my current passport was issued while i was planning a trip to Russia in June 2005. (Note the date. 2005.) So i pulled out my passport to see exactly when it expired. 02 Jan – ‘noooooo, it’s already expired’ – 2015.
Yeah. Passports last ten years, not five. I’m an idiot sometimes.
I’m not even going to bother looking up whether or not it’s possible to renew a passport this early. Even if it is, it’s ridiculous for me to do so. Debating whether i can properly mark this ‘done’, as a self-completing goal, or ‘unable to complete’, as a sherry-is-an-idiot goal.

Actual no-really-i-did-accomplish-something goal: I got my bonsai tree! It’s a beautiful little Hawaiian umbrella tree, which is supposed to be pretty easy to take care of. Now i just have to keep it alive – but i’m starting to think i’m not so bad at taking care of plants as previously believed… I have a pineapple plant which, unexpectedly enough, is actually starting to grow. It’s my bamboo plant (supposedly the easiest plant possible to take care of) which is doing the worst, but it’s also the oldest. Maybe i just need to learn how to really take care of it, beyond simple watering.

Related posts:

1. Lies and Happiness
2. Happy Funs
3. firrrrst… sendoff