Impotent Impotables

I awoke this morning to a weird smell in the house. It was very different from anything I have ever smelled. Nobody could figure out what it was. It was obviously not gas, definitely not food, and resembled burning and chemicals. It spread rapidly throughout the house. We wanted to make sure the house wasn't going to catch fire, so we called the fire department. It took them a few minutes, but eventually they figured it out and they pronounced our fridge dead. Thankfully, we have a spare fridge in the garage and my mom was able to bring her mini fridge back from her office, but it's nowhere near enough room for all of our crap. It was a good excuse to get rid of our rotten stuff, at least, but now we need a new fridge.

My Doberman puppy swallowed a cooked chicken bone whole yesterday. He's made it a day and a half without any problems, so chances are he will be okay. It's just a matter of waiting until he passes the bone.

Two of the sunflower seeds have sprouted, the radishes are sprouting like crazy, the green onions are just sprouting and the spinach seeds have been planted. We also got a cucumber plant, which will go in a pot tomorrow, and some peas because the Doberman ate my pack of pea seeds.

Purity balls are the creepiest thing I have ever come across. Young girls wearing the same white dress dance around a cross and pledge TO THEIR FATHERS to stay "pure" until marriage. That is just wrong and gross and barfy. If this practice isn't abolished in my lifetime, I will at least suggest changing the definition of "purity balls" to a clean-shaven, shiny, smooth, perfectly sculpted ball sack. That way, these creepy dads will have to face their gay sides for a split second and be too uncomfortable to think about purity balls because they threaten their precious masculinity. Maybe it will make them finally want to take the truck nuts off of their pickup trucks.

In the mean time, I will invent truck ovaries.

So, what does any of this have to do with the title of this post? Well, most of it has nothing to do with it. As a result of downsizing the fridge, I had to throw out what was left of my cappuccino martini and a third of a bottle of Gewürztraminer. The latter is my favourite wine, so I had a final glass of it and helped finish off a bottle of St-Remy a la creme. It is a sad day for us lushes.

The Feminism Fridge and Other Updates

First of all, I have a shiny, new wireless keyboard. It's the Logitech K360 in black, in case you give a shit. I no longer have to reach over to get to my laptop keyboard! My desk has a keyboard drawer, which until now I had been using for my pen tablet, pennies and cups. If I had lots of money I would have bought the solar-powered one, but I don't. It's hardly an investment anyway, seeing as two AA batteries will last for three years in this thing and the keyboard itself will probably last just as long as the solar-powered one would. It's a bit weird typing with it and having the tablet all the way to the right of the desk, but I'll get used to it soon enough.

Second, I had allergy testing a few days ago. I am no longer allergic to trees except for a mild allergy to birch, but I should really stay the hell away from horses and ragweed. I might get allergy shots, but I'd like to see an ENT before I do that.

If I may toot my own horn, I kicked this dude's ass in the first letter to the editor on this page. The editing they did to it is atrocious, but it looks half-decent in print. As you can see here, I write more than one sentence in each paragraph, but I guess that can look a little awkward when shoving it all into newspaper columns. I'll also add that it should be Margo Maine's "Body Wars," not what they wrote. Anyway, my feminist friends who came across it enjoyed it very much. One even put it on her fridge, where she and her roommate post feminism-related items. I must say, though, that the second letter is pretty damn awesome as well.

The comments on the original article are also awesome. I'm glad that everyone agrees, and I am happy to see that the majority of commenters are men.

So, yeah. Nothing else worth noting is really going on right now. Hopefully the weather won't suck too much this week. Goodnight, world.

On legislating biology

I've recently been thinking about how the IAAF is banning female athletes with abnormally high amounts of testosterone and forcing them to undergo hormone therapy or gonadectomy in order to compete again. I recognize that sports mean a lot to many people, but I don't care for sports at all myself and I'm a horrible athlete. However, I don't have to get any enjoyment out of athletics in order to see the problems with this.

Part of the reason I suck so hard at sports is that I'm mildly asthmatic, so when I run even short distances, I find myself out of breath. Tomorrow, however, I will have an epiphany and decide that my true calling is to be an Olympic runner. All the non-asthmatic competitors are going to have an unfair advantage over me, so to level the playing field, I propose that they each smoke a whole pack of cigarettes before every race.

I'm not actually going to have any epiphanies tomorrow.

Let me be the 1837563q03476rd person to say that this would be a horrible idea. Why should I force the other competitors to damage their bodies for my sake? The same goes for women who have high testosterone levels. There are so many scientific reasons against this new policy - women respond differently to testosterone, so having high testosterone means nothing for a woman whose body does not react to it; the normal amount of testosterone in high-performance female athletes is not known; hormone therapy and gonadectomy can potentially be dangerous; there are countless other medical anomalies such as large hands that give an athletic advantage that cannot be corrected; etc. That, and it's clearly sexist. Why not test men for abnormally high testosterone levels? Would that not give them an unfair advantage? The obvious answer is yes. Do I need to say that ten more times?

Wait a minute. The answer is no, for both male and female athletes. It's not an unfair advantage, just an advantage. Abnormal does not mean the same thing as unnatural. Anabolic steroids are unnatural. Intersex disorders are abnormal. I believe that those who have any sort of abnormality should never have to live in shame because of it, so if it ultimately becomes someone's greatest gift, leave it the hell alone.