Is there a shredder for sperm, part 2

Read the sequel to my May 25 post about semen.

In the near future, trendy hotels (and maybe even some of the sordid ones) are going to feature bathrooms equipped with spermicidal lubricant dispensers, as a means of protection against this kind of legalized mugging. (Or, as a low-tech solution, how about toilets that can accomodate flushed condoms without getting clogged?)

I feel for Deon Francois. This is probably not the way he wanted his fifteen minutes of fame.

Act now to make VAWA gender-neutral

I've been hearing from various sources about the sexist and discriminatory Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), now up for renewal in the U.S. Senate, but it was Glenn Sacks who, in one of his mass mailings, alerted me and perhaps thousands of others to a link you can use, sponsored by the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, to write to your Congress-person and other elected officials. My senator is, unfortunately, Hillary Clinton, and I haven't even received the courtesy of a response -- though perhaps it's still too early. The site allows you to send a boilerplate message, but gives room for adding a personal paragraph. Here's how my letter reads -- the part in bold is what I added myself:

Jul 25, 2005

Senator Hillary Clinton
United States Senate
476 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0001

Dear Senator Clinton,

On June 8, 2005, The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was introduced for reauthorization in the United States Senate By Senator Biden, as bill # S.1197. I urge you to make VAWA gender neutral and provide services to ALL victims of domestic abuse.

Statistics show that men and women experience domestic violence in equal numbers. But, even if violence against women is more prevalent, women's advocates should have nothing to fear by making the language of the law gender-neutral.

The Violence Against Women Act is dangerous legislation that politicizes law-enforcement, violates the constitutional rights of American citizens, funds political advocacy, and undermines families.

As a taxpayer, I strongly object to this use of my tax dollars to damage American families and freedom.

I urge you to heed the warnings of the thirteen nationally prominent leaders who recently signed a letter to you, plus the views of nationally syndicated opinion leaders who have written recently of the dangers of this Act, including Phyllis Schlafly, Wendy McElroy, Kathleen Parker, and many others.

At the very minimum, the bill should include explicit language providing that all Americans receive equal access to taxpayer-funded resources and the equal protection of the laws, regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity, or race.

The current VAWA text discriminates against men who are at least 35% of domestic violence victims, according to Justice Department statistics. The bill and grant guidelines deny funding of services for men who are victims of domestic violence.

Groups that serve male victims and faith-based groups should be expressly included. Funds for victim services should be specifically prohibited from use for political purposes.

I am also concerned by the undemocratic process by which this legislation is being enacted. I urge that you hold open, fair, and balanced hearings on this legislation, to include a broad diversity of public opinion on this bill, including the views of the thirteen leaders, of detached scholarly experts whose work is based on scientific principles rather than political advocacy, of male victims
of domestic violence, and of women who have experienced the adverse impact of VAWA on their families.

Again, I urge you to make VAWA gender neutral and provide services to ALL victims of domestic abuse.

Sincerely,

Mr. Jeffrey Zeth
(address suppressed)

It's almost impossible to exaggerate how important it is that anyone within earshot of this blog should link to this page and e-mail your elected officials to tell them how wrong this is. Anyone who understands what true equality means knows that equal rights before the law is exactly that. If the issue were employment, or welfare, or healthcare, it goes without saying that the language used would be gender-neutral. Why would we treat violence any differently?

How's your Family Court Judge feeling today?

Just to show how arbitrary and random our child support laws can be:

Compare this story with the story of Simon Ajose, the attorney-turned-divinity student whose family court judge, Jeffrey Sunshine, issued a support order based on his potential earnings as a lawyer, rather than on his real earnings as a minister.

Can anyone make any sense of this system? If the point to be taken here isn't that a judge has sovereign authority over whether you eat or starve, I'd really like to know what the point is.

Welcome to the club

People all over (except, for the most part, at work) are being real friendly and accomodating when they see the shoulder immobilizer. Wearing it kind of identifies you as a member of a fraternity. On Saturday a sanitation worker called out to me as I was walking up the street, "Hey! It gets better!" And last night I went to the Blockbuster to rent some movies and met a woman wearing a sling like mine on her right arm. She'd been in a biking accident which could have been a lot more serious than it was. She'd tumbled over the handlebars and broke the shoulder in addition to tearing out both tendons. She's going to be renting a lot of movies this summer.

If it's free, it's for me

Heh, heh. I told you I'd find plenty of free stuff to do that didn't require hands.

Citizen Cope were great, and though I don't really care much for hip-hop, it sure beat staying at home listening to old records. But yesterday was even better, and though I definitely didn't agree with everybody's sexual politics, musically it was about as good a time as any I've had all year with two functional arms.

Happy anniversary to my shoulder

Almost a year to the day after I disclocated my shoulder the first time, I've done it again. I was rollerblading down a hill in Riverside Park which I've gone down many times before. I'd engaged the brake and was coasting along when I must've hit a twig (or something) and skidded. To steady myself I grabbed the guardrail with my left hand. The rest of me kept going, and pop! Out came the shoulder right out of its joint.

Separating your shoulder causes unbearable pain. A startled passerby whose name I never learned kindly called EMS for me and stayed with me until they got there. Thankfully, I didn't have to spend the entire night in the ER. I was lucky enough to be treated by some very compassionate and knowledgeable docs at St. Luke's / Roosevelt Hospital who knew what the hell they were doing. Unlike last year, I didn't have to stay the night but got sent home in a sling within a few hours.

Oh, well. It was a nice summer. Hopefully I'll be recovered in time to still go to the midwest next month with Samantha. Meanwhile, I can think of worse places than New York to be stranded with only the use of one arm. Not being able to take trips out of town will save me a lot of money, and there's enough stuff here that Samantha and I can do that we might not even miss the countryside.

The Harry Potter phenomenon

The special world of "The Lord of the Rings" was not only the world Tolkien created. In high school in 1977, bringing any of the books to school triggered an immediate introduction to the ten or twenty others in your environment who had either read the trilogy or were reading it. All the misfits came out of the woodwork, and by the end of the day you knew every other person in the school who had an interest in the books. There was something deliciously subversive about bringing a book about a fantasy world into a 9th grade science class. Discussions about the behavior of right triangles and prime numbers were easier to sit through with a copy of "The Return of the King" in view on your desktop. You envied people who hadn't yet finished the books, because of the wonder in store for them.

Unfortunately, it was mostly downhill after Tolkien. Neither Terry Brooks, nor Anne McCaffrey, nor Ursula K. Le Guin, nor even the venerable C.S. Lewis had a vision that even came close to the sweep and scale of Middle Earth. Lewis was OK, and had a sort of coattail factor going for him owing to his friendship with Tolkien, but he was primarily a philosopher and theologian, whereas Tolkien was 100% storyteller. Mervyn Peak's Gormenghast trilogy, written at about the same time, was great. But his vision was darker, much less innocent, and more like Kafka in his least horrific moments. And I never understood what anybody saw in Le Guin. Her use of invented words and silly names gave the genre an absurd quality, and she never learned how to write a decent sentence.

Disappointed as I was, I've waded back into fantasy every few years to see if I was mistaken, and to try to get some of the magic of Middle Earth back. I'm amazed to find that, each time, the genre has hit a new low. New worlds? Railroad schedules would feed the imagination better than this sterile, unoriginal crap.

So when I hear radio people talking about the massive success of Harry Potter, and listen to scholars of fantasy (??) actually comparing J.K. Rowling to Dickens, I assume the hype has reached a whole new level. I assume that people raised on this dreck have gotten themselves graduate degrees and are using their academic positions to cater to the lowest common literary denominator. Have I read the Harry Potter books? Of course not. I've already had too much of my time wasted on recycled elf-stories that only made me miss J.R.R. more. But to hear these guys talk, I better read them soon, otherwise I won't be able to help my daughter (who'll be in high school in ten years) pass her state regents exams. A Elbereth! Gilthoniel!

Oh, look -- you dropped $400

My daughter's mother unintentionally threw a monkey-wrench into the July 4th weekend by leaving $400 in Samantha's insulated medication pack. This was apparently money intended for the contractor she'd hired to do some renovations on the apartment. The money went unnoticed until I forgot the whole pack in the Penn Station men's room on the way back from a visit out to my parents. I rushed back, found the pack where I'd left it, went through its contents to make sure everything was there, and discovered the cash.

If you've been reading for a while you've heard my story about my ex and money, so you'll likely at least understand it when I admit to not telling her about my discovery right away. The pack had already been in my possession for about 36 hours. I wanted to see how long it would take for Mommy Moneybags to miss $400 (I'd notice it immediately, that's for sure.) At 11pm she left a message, sounding like she was on the verge of tears, asking if I'd noticed anything in the medication pack. I returned the call the next morning, and by then her tears had worn off, and she was as nasty as ever. Not only did she not seem to know or care how lucky she was, she tried picking holes in my story.

She did agree to a meeting, which we had tonight. I'd wanted to have a frank talk about money. A meeting with no lawyers, no therapists, just the two of us speaking as adults. I asked, in exchange for my honesty and display of good will, to come to a private agreement to take the place of the garnishment being held against my wages. She was skeptical, though she did say she'd think about it. But she still showed no gratitude, and she became angry when I emphasized how easy it would have been for me to say that the money had probably been taken by an opportunist at Penn Station.

In fact there were only two reasons I didn't take the money. One is the obvious reason that it would have been unethical, and I'm trying -- for better or worse -- to live as clean and moral a life as I possibly can without becoming boring. The other reason -- less noble but probably just as strong -- is that it wouldn't have sent any message to this person who is causing me so much pain. Either she would have had to accept my lie, in which case she wouldn't have known that I'd gotten the money, and thus wouldn't grasp the revenge I'd taken on her, or she'd reject my story, assume I'd taken it, and leave me to protest my innocence. And with each protest I'd be eroding my own belief in myself and my own integrity. Bad deal -- I'd get to keep the $400, but I'd lose my self-respect, and she'd get to keep hers.

So I gave the money back. Was I wrong? Should I have told her right away, or should I have kept the money? Where did I fuck up? I don't ask for feedback much, but this time it seems appropriate. C'mon, people -- whether you're regular readers or just casual visitors, this is one occasion where I welcome your comments.

Medication time

Two polar opposite experiences with her medication still leave me wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong. On the first night I feel like Nurse Rached ordering Jack Nicholson's lobotomy. I beg, plead, harangue, do everything except hold her down physically. The second night, I give the shot at almost the same time. Samantha not only cooperates but helps prepare the shot. She directs me to the spot she wants right away, barely flinches as the needle goes in, and says it didn't hurt at all. She's even smiling. If it weren't for the little speck of medicine on the outside of the skin I'd wonder if she really got it. But the memory of the earlier evening is still etched in my memory. She was so upset she didn't even want a hug from me -- would you hug someone who just stabbed you? -- so I tucked her into bed and queued up some good music on the I-Pod, which inspires this Ode to Humatrope. Apologies to old Blue Eyes -- though I hope he's appreciating it from wherever he is.

I've had you under my skin
I've had you deep in my epiderm,
been there done that and now it's someone else's turn.
Don't want you under my skin

I tried so not to give in
I said to myself, I hate this stuff, daddy, I'm done!
But I should know better and think before I try to run.
I need you under my skin.

I'd sacrifice anything, scream, get mad
just to keep from having you near
In spite of a warning voice that comes from my dad
and repeats, repeats in my ear,

"Don't you know, sweetie pie, you never can win,
use your mentality, wake up to reality."
But each time that I do, just the thought of you
makes me scream just before I begin
cause I've got you under my skin.