The GirlAlive Blog

If you have children or if you care about children or if you care about the environment or if you care about small businesses or if you care about charities like Goodwill and Salvation Army, you need to be writing to your congressperson and getting all up in arms about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. It will destroy small businesses. It will force the destruction of all used toys and childrens clothes, and make it illegal to sell children's items on Etsy or Ebay. It is designed to stop lead contamination in childrens' products, but it is punishing the innocent in the process.

Go to http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/ to read more, and then get angry. And you don't have to be American to be angry about this. If you live in Europe or Canada or anywhere, it will be illegal to sell childrens' goods to anyone in America.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I didn't vote. There are reasons that make sense and reasons that don't.

First of all, up until the very last minute I was undecided on the presidential election. I could have gotten an absentee ballot and just waited to see and I could have even left that space blank if I couldn't decide. But I didn't. And if I had, I'm still not sure which box I would have ticked.

On the smaller state-level elections, I don't know anything. It's not like they cover Minnesota House District 8 elections on the BBC. I did some internet research on the issues and things, but then I ran into another problem. I was reading up on the issue up for the vote in Minnesota, to raise the state sales tax to invest more in conservation. It struck me: I don't have any logical right to vote on that. Legally, I can cast my vote and no one can stop me, but logically it bothers me. If I vote in favor of higher taxes, it's a tax I never have to pay. And if I vote against it and the wildlife all dies, that doesn't affect me either. It would be so easy to tick that box and raise Minnesota sales tax, knowing that in the next ten years, I might spend up to a month there actually paying that tax.

I don't live in Minnesota. I don't pay taxes in Minnesota. I don't feel like I have a right to dictate how Minnesota is run. The same goes for the national level elections. I'm an American citizen, but is it fair for me to decide the politics of a country I only visit every few years? Frankly, I don't feel right about it. My relationship with America right now is that it's a place where some of my family lives and a place I visit once in a while. I might have family in Sweden too. And it's a lot easier for me to visit Sweden. But that doesn't mean I should vote in Swedish elections.

I'm planning to apply for British citizenship because this is where I pay my taxes and where I live. I won't be renouncing my American citizenship or anything, but I also don't know if I'll ever feel right about voting in a country I will probably never live in again.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 05:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so I'm getting really sick of vegans saying that eggs are "chicken abortions".  Let me use science to explain how that is a complete load of crap.

An abortion is the destruction of an embryo or fetus.  An embryo or fetus is formed with egg and sperm combine and divide and turn into some type of animal.  An egg, on the other hand, is just an egg.  There is no sperm,  The chicken never had sex.  If you kept that egg in the nest, it would not hatch into an adorable fluffy chick.  It would rot and stink. 

The eggs that we buy and eat are more analogous to chicken menstruation than chicken abortion.   They are useless eggs that didn't get fertilised and are expelled from the body to make room for fresh eggs.  There is no ethical reason on earth not to eat eggs, as long as the chickens are treated well.  So if you're that concerned about chickens, buy free range eggs.

This has been a public service message brought to you by science and common sense. 

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm about to make a bunch of enemies among my friends and family.  But I don't care.  I just heard about the changes of the laws in California allowing gays to marry, and I'm happy about it.

I'm a Christian.  I believe in the Bible.  I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for our sins.  Do I believe that homosexuality is wrong?  Who cares?  Some of the nicest, coolest people I've known in this world are gay.   And I believe that God loves them as much as He loves me.  The Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself, and a lot of my neighbors are gay.  So I love them as much as I love any of my straight friends.

A lot of my Christian friends and family strongly believe that gays are part of some grand conspiracy to undermine Christianity.  I've known too many gay people to believe that.  My friends are not part of a political agenda.  They are real people with problems and pain and joy and happiness like anyone else.  

But that's not the main reason that I'm happy about the changes in California law.  The main reason is that I'm a strong supporter of the US Constitution.  The first line of the first amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."  Why do people want gay marriage to be illegal?  Because "traditionally" marriage is a man and a woman.  Where did this tradition come from?  Judaism, Christianity, and later adopted into Islam.  Western society has believed that homosexuality is wrong for as long as it has been dominated by Christianity. 

American society is no longer just Christian European white people.  As the world becomes smaller and cultures interact, we must accept that religion-tied traditions are not the necessarily the norm of everyone in America.  Imagine that you are a devout Buddhist from a hypothetical Pacific island.  In Buddhist teachings, being faithful to your partner (regardless of sex) is a virtue, and you hope to follow the established rituals of your new country and get married.  But you find out that because you want to marry someone of the same sex, this is illegal.  If you asked around to find out why, it would always be because of Christianity.  But didn't the constitution say that there is no state religion in America?  Why is this hypothetical Buddhist being forced to remain single? 

By prohibiting gay marriage at the governmental level, we are forcing a single religious belief on all people, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.  And that is not a very American thing to do.

Back in the 1500's the Bible was first being printed in "normal" languages instead of just in Latin.  Normal Christians could start to read it and determine for themselves what was right.  A group of them decided that it was more Biblical to baptise adults rather than infants.  So they baptised each other as adults, and the Catholic church hunted them down and killed them because Catholicism was the official state religion, and they broke the religious rules.  Christians today do the same thing when they try to mandate Christian moral law into American statutory law. 

If a church or a minister wants to refuse to marry gays, I don't have a problem with that at all.  Churches are there to interpret scripture.  That is not the purpose of the US government.   

My own pastor wouldn't perform my wedding because I was marrying a non-Christian.  I don't have a problem with that pastor's decision.  He was only following his personal moral beliefs, and I hold no grudge against him for it.  But if the state of Minnesota had refused me a marriage license because I was marrying a non-Christian, I would have been just as hurt and annoyed as my gay friends who are just trying to live their lives like everyone else.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 06:40 PM | Permalink

No, I did not vote in the presidential primaries.  I can't.  You can do absentee voting for major elections, but not for primaries.  But I've been following stuff from over here.

Those who know me know that I'm a lifelong Republican.  But in the last few years I've been considering my position and whether I want to retain attachment to a particular party at all.  I even considered possibly voting Democrat in the next election, because I agree with their stance on healthcare a bit more than the Republicans.   But I still agree with Republicans more on other issues. 

Then I  saw Bill Maher on a talk show, and he entirely made up my mind for me.  I've been out of the country so long that I guess I forgot what pompous, hate-filled and condescending assholes Democrats can be.   Bill Maher never has anything reasonable and logical to say.  Every word from his mouth was essentially, "I hate Republicans and I think they should all die, especially Christians who are all morons."  So I'll be voting Republican, thanks entirely to Bill Maher.  I can't be part of a political party that spouts so much hate of everyone they don't understand. 

Alana

Posted by Alana at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This is my first year watching the Olympics from another country.  (I once watched the US Open - the tennis one - from a crappy hotel in Russia.  But that's another story.)  It's weird.  In the US, all the big winter sports get covered like crazy.  You've got skiing and figure skating and hockey and all that.  Here, the only team the UK has that has even the slightest chance of a medal is the curling team.  So I get to see hours of curling every day, and coverage of the British girl who came in 37th in a skiing event.  There is no snow here mostly, so there really aren't winter Olympic athletes from the UK. 

But curling is not the very gay sport I'm referring to in the title.  Curling is one of those sports like golf; it looks like it might be fun to play, but watching it is as exciting as watching mold grow on an old tea bag.  But it isn't gay.  The gayest Olympic sport that I think I've seen is Doubles Luge.

I used to think that wrestling, with all the partially naked grabbing, was the gayest Olympic sport.  But then I saw Doubles Luge.  That is the sport where men squeeze themselves into skintight spandex, and then one of the men lays on top of the other one as they zoom down a luge run.  I mean, if you're an athlete and you think, "I'd like to go down a hill really fast with my cousin," wouldn't you maybe think about getting a 2-man bobsled?  But no.  These inevitably Northern European men just decide to lay on top of each other on the luge sled.  

I kind of miss living in a country that sometimes wins in the Olympics.  But my husband doesn't mind that I always root for the Americans.  Except for one Swiss ski-jumper that I like.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

diaryland entry 10:22 p.m. - 2005-08-11

Reason Number 37 To Hate Living In a Small Midwestern Town

A car rolled over on the freeway and hit a concrete overpass and 2 people were killed.

In an average city, that would be a minor news item on the day it happened and nothing more would be said. Not in Duluth. In Duluth, that story has been a top news item FOR A MONTH!!!! First they had to talk to all the family and friends. Then the pastor of the church they attended. Then the family again. Then full media coverage of the funeral. I swear, the death of the pope and the London bombings combined didn't get as much air time as this one stinking car crash.

It seems really insensitive of me, but I'm sick of hearing about it. I felt bad for the family the first 2 days. After a month of this story, I just want to scream, "I get it! They're dead! Let's move on to a real news story now!"

Tonight they weredoing a news story about how this horrible tragedy could cause a rise in suicide rates in the area. First of all, there is no evidence of that. And if there are more suicides, maybe those people killed themselves not because of the car crash, but because the media coverage of it was a constant reminder that they live in a stinking hellhole of Midwestern suburbia, where something as mundane as a car accident can be top news for a month.

Have I mentioned that I hate this city?

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

diaryland entry 10:23 a.m. - 2005-07-22

Okay, so it is about 2 weeks after the first bombing in the London subways and a day after the second, more pathetic, bombing.

Any intelligent person would know that the London police are probably jumpy about people bombing the subways by now. Any intelligent person with nothing to hide would stop when the police are chasing them in the subway.

So anyone who is all mad about the guy who was shot running from police in the subway has to step back for a moment and realize that if you think the police were wrong, you're as stupid as the guy who got shot running from cops in the subway. He died of stupidity. Even if he was innocent, it is just darwinism in action.

I have to get back to work. As you were.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)