The House recently voted to cut Planned Parenthood funding and eliminate Title X funding. Planned Parenthood is consistently referred to as an abortion center by it’s critics. However, minimal searching results in PP’s 07-08 annual report where a pie chart reports that abortions make up 3% of their services. The bulk of services are contraception and STD testing and treatment. Anyone who has actually looked at services offered by Planned Parenthood locations would see that abortions are not even provided at all locations.

So what if we judged everything by what it did 3% of the time?

Hospitals exist to injure you and most of the time it’s due to negligence or as those evil doctors want you to believe, “a mistake”.

Twitter exists just to publish Justin Beiber’s tweets.

Everyone in Washington DC has HIV or AIDS. Hmm, that seems related to PP’s funding…

All of your restaurant food has spit in it. On purpose.

Women don’t deserve to automatically be considered pre-pregnant by doctors, have laws passed that limiting my control and the choices I can make regarding my own body and watch as elected officials make decisions based on their own personal dogma. Planned Parenthood doesn’t deserved to be recognized for only one type of service they provide. And that one controversial service they provide? It’s really important to a lot of men and women and it’s not something that should put a wonderful agency on the chopping block.

Check the Planned Parenthood site for ways to show your support.

(I looked up the 3% facts! They are real according to the Internet!)

I can’t sleep, probably because of the impending slicing and cauterizing. I’m happy I have acupuncture tomorrow. That should help me relax a little.  This whole week has been stressful at work. I should have seen it coming, trying to balance 3 grant applications due within the next 2 months.

The one that is the hardest is of course not even a research grant. It’s a pain in the ass because it involves researching job training programs in an industry I know nothing about and the two people I’m working with are not at all organized. Over the past week, they have told me that I’m in charge of the grant (I’m not, I don’t know where they got this from), been asked questions that I have directly answered in emails, and after an afternoon meeting, I get a call the next morning asking if I’ve done my follow-up tasks already. I know this chick tries to be a suck up and texts the execs at 7am every morning with the agency’s financial updates but I am not researching this stuff at home. I will do it at work and have it ready by the time of the next meeting. Which is tomorrow, yay. And my cool intern is leaving this week and next month she will be replaced by a lame intern that smells like smoke.

My research grants are coming together a little better but I’m concerned we won’t have them done in time because my boss will be out right before one is due. The logical person would say “Just finish the proposal before she leaves.” But the logical person does not work at my agency.

So I’ve been stressed and bitchy but I have done some fun things this week. I saw a burlesque version of the Nutcracker. It was all sexy like and we had good seats and there were trapeze burlesque girls! Yay for pasties and swinging from silks.

My grandma gave me her Roomba (or knockoff version of a Roomba) because she says it scares the dog. I think she is just terrified of technology. That will help with what feels like neverending cleaning. How does a small apartment get dirty so fast?

And what the hell is with this new WordPress  interface? I know you can’t see it unless you also have a WordPress blog but it sucks!

The coordinator at the GLBT health center contacted me and they finally have an LCSW supervisor for me! Having a goal will take away from the general dullness of my job. I’m doing data entry right now and I’m bitter about it.

I need to take advantage of more outdoor activities before summer is all gone. I went to Ginza festival at a Buddhist temple in Old Town. The temple is really big and had indoor and outdoor vendors, food and dancers. One of their priests (yes, this temple uses the term priest) did a Q&A session on Pure Land Buddhism and the temple. I felt cool because I knew the answers to some of the questions. I’m still liking Zen over Pure Land. I went back to meditation with a friend and will hopefully keep going and get past the horrible feeling of my entire leg falling asleep.

Favorite quote of the night from my Buddhism teacher:
Student: How are these precepts different from The 10 Commandments?
Teacher: You aren’t going to burn in hell.

Also, one of the articles we read today said that many people ignore the precept that says not to drink alcohol. Yay!
I had something I wanted to write last week about Buddhism but cannot remember what exactly it related to now. I know it ended with comparing Buddhism to The Song That Never Ends.

Back to festivals, after Ginza fest I went to North Halsted Market Days. I watched the ROTC perform (Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps), found an awesome new toy in Tulip that I desire and got into a huge argument/discussion with my friend over transgender people. I already knew she was more conservative/less understanding than I was concerning GLBT issues especially related to fluidity of sexual orientation and gender roles.
I believe sexual orientation is fluid (see Kinsey Scale) and that it would be super awesome if gender roles would move more in that direction.

She spouted some pretty ignorant statements about 1 homosexual encounter=100% homosexual, transgender is OK but not in my house!, bisexuals are just greedy and don’t really exist, it’s not OK for a straight man to feel comfortable around gay men…stuff that I haven’t heard/tolerated in some time. Maybe I do have friends that have similar beliefs but they know better than to voice these things around me. I will argue and in this case, I have many more facts to back me up.

The whole situation just pissed me off, reminded me of arguing with my parents when I was younger, crying when my dad said that the GLBT movement should drop transgender people because they were on the fringe of society, getting harsh feedback from a boss when attempting to educate high schoolers about Matthew Shepard. Even now, educating my coworkers about transgender people and realizing I have to start at “this is what GLBT is.” I have low expectations at work but pretty high expectations of my friends and even my family now. (My dad no longer holds the same opinion of transgender people and my PFLAG award is hanging in my old bedroom.)

So maybe the GLBT health center has good timing.

Anti-Cruelty Society hosts workshops on everything from pet CPR to adding a baby to a household of pets. I should have posted about this earlier, they just hosted a workshop on bunnies. Tons of stupid parents get their kids rabbits for Easter and don’t have a clue how to take care of them.

I wish Anti-Cruelty held workshops on the commitments related to more pets-cats, dogs, lizards. Too many times I would see animals when I worked at a vet clinic that looked neglected and emaciated.
“How long has your pet been sick?” “Uhh.. a few days?”
What the owner meant was “I have no idea, I/my kids/my wife stopped paying attention to my pet years ago. I just feed the thing now.”
Go to the Anti-Cruelty society and you will see a lot of 3-5 year old pets. Just out of that cute puppy/kitty range and into the “Oh, I’m bored with you now” range.

So what I’m saying is pets are not disposable and don’t make good Easter presents. Go buy your fat kid some candy.

I’ve been watching a bunch of movies the last couple weeks, something I don’t normally do.

First one was No Country For Old Men. Lots of killing and that guy. You know, that guy. He’s in everything. Even my dreams. The movie felt like it was 10 hours long. Maybe it was because everyone had a Southern accent and talk reaalll slooww. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a hard on for the Coen Brothers like I do for Wes Anderson.

So I finally saw The Darjeeling Limited. There’s a group of actors that will always have work as long as Wes Anderson is making movies. I don’t even know some of their names, it’s just “Oh, thats the same Indian guy from Life Aquatic.” The movie was good, the scenes on the train were excellent but it didn’t stun me like Life Aquatic did. I still think Life Aquatic is a great movie and I love the animation with the fishes.

In between these two movies I saw Knocked Up. It made me mad. Mad because it was not nearly as funny as everyone said it was. Does the girl have a single funny line or is it all riding on the guy and his stoner friends? Even the bitchy sister is funnier than the girl. Also mad because one conversation with her mom about “taking care of it” is not “addressing abortion as an option.” Funny that right after I see the movie, I see an article in Bitch magazine addressing the same thing I was bothered by. Why create this movie that has so many serious parts (too many for a comedy) and totally gloss over abortion? Yes, I know there would be no movie if she wire hangered the thing but she can at least have a moment where she thinks about her career, the fact that she doesn’t even have her own place, her pretty little figure, her dumbass baby daddy and say “fuck, I can’t have this baby.”

Sarcastic Spoiler Alert! It has a happy ending. Even the though whole movie is about how wrong these people are for each other, they stay together. For the baby. Aww, isn’t that the worst decision ever? Yes it is! Yes it is!

And in the To See pile: Why didn’t anyone tell me that Angelina Jolie is in Beowulf? I’m seeing that in 3-D!

Unrelated, my computer speakers seem to be getting quieter. I can’t even dance to Daft Punk in my room! Now that I think about it, my speakers are at least 5 years old but I don’t think they are the problem. My little brother just bought an insane amount of computer parts from an auction at his school. I might enlist him to help me put my computer in a new case(one that actually has a back!) and get a new sound card. I also hate that each program I use has it’s own volume control. And there is a master volume control for my computer and an external volume control for my speakers. WTF redundant.

My first semi-research related task! Make numbers pretty. It seems like it would be an easy task, my boss showed me nice program outcome grids with goals, benchmarks, results all clearly labeled.

Then I started to get the actual data. I got one that was done exactly how it was supposed to be. This is now my favorite department. There are 4 departments and you know what you have to do when you have more than one of something. (Make them fight!)

The next department could not grasp the concept of “this is what I did last year” vs “this is what I will do next year” and put everything on one grid marked 2008 and gave me narratives. Now there is reading involved? Hate this. It took me a while to figure out but eventually confirmed that the grid they gave me was referring to last year even though it said 2008. I know, numbers r hrd.

The data just went down from there. The last thing i was given was handwritten and given to me at 4:00 the day my numbers were due. I suppose I should be happy I didn’t get anything in crayon. Since I got everything so late and half-assed, I had to take work home with me which made me feel very adult but mad that the people I’m working with are so unorganized.

My boss looks to me to magically make coworkers respond to deadlines when they never have before. My first few weeks I panicked when people did not return my calls and things were not handed in on time. Then I learned that coworkers do that because there are never any consequences. One night when there was lots of drama going on, I suggested consequences rather than hounding people for answers. My boss agreed but I think she just explained to the person dodging questions how their inefficiency was making other people’s jobs difficult or impossible to do. And these aren’t low level staff I’m talking about, these are clinical supervisors, directors of departments.

So I’m not sure how I am supposed to magically change the culture of an organization. Especially in my position. I’m a gatekeeper because my boss is one of the top people at the agency but I’m not in a position of power. The majority of what I do is very independent from the rest of the agency.