4/15: Someone on a forum I frequent was nice enough to fix my terrible Photoshop.  Here’s the result.

In other news, I’ll be moving to another town next month.  It’s not by choice and it sucks, but at least the Viking and I will be together, and it’s not too far from my hometown.

I’m glad I bought it, because Tyson deserves to sell well, but I’m putting this book aside for a while.  Maybe if I pick up where I left off in a month, I’ll have forgotten what I’ve already read and find the material fresh again.  But for now?  Bleah.

Pinker thinks the change comes from literacy and education.  The beginnings of human rights came in the Age of Reason, when more people could read and there was a lot of publishing going on.  Voltaire and Rousseau and their contemporaries wrote a lot, and their ideas were presented to many of the public thanks to increased literacy.  As education spread, violence went down.  Even in this century, animals were thought by scientists not to have feelings until about the 1970s.  Animal rights caused a rise in research ethics and humanitarian treatment of lab animals.

There’s a lot to digest in Better Angels.  It’s a long book, but it doesn’t feel that way.  The first several chapters look at the history of violence, from prehistory until the present.  Then Pinker presents arguments for why things have changed so much.  He refuses to discuss the future, saying the past and present cannot guarantee the future.  But it’s still a very optimistic book.  It left me feeling pretty good about humanity as a whole, and that there is hope for us to become an even kinder species.

I definitely recommend this.  Five stars out of five.

When I’ve been awake, I’ve been reading, playing ME3 with the Viking, and cooking.  I’m not overly fond of cooking, but I don’t want restaurant food, and the local mom-and-pop grocery has incredibly good meat (locally produced, mostly, and always fresh as hell).  So I’ve been cooking a lot of simple dishes that show off the meat quality — baked chicken, grilled steaks, etc.  A few days ago I made an eye round roast in the crock pot, and it was divine with a bit of fresh-ground horseradish.

Damn, now I’m getting hungry.  All I have for breakfast is protein bars and bananas.  I’d much rather have something else, but I’m too lazy to cook more than once a day.  Maybe I have some hot dogs…

The Viking and I are only about halfway through the game. I expect there will be a lot more tears along the way, as well as a good amount of laughter. The inter-character comedy writing is a blast. I could use some of that right now. Instead, I’m going to curl up with a book, read until dawn, and then get some sleep.

I love this game.

As far as groups go, I tried a mental illness support group.  I tried the local Unitarian Universalist church.  I tried all kinds of things, and I never felt comfortable anywhere.  I know this means there’s something wrong with me, that I can’t ever belong, but I have this stupid hope that one day I’ll find a group who will welcome me with open arms and be supportive and I’ll fit in.  I’m not really lonely — the Viking is my best friend in the whole world, and we spend tons of time together.  I have my mom, and my aforementioned knitting friend, whom I have lunch with once a week.  I just… I want to be part of something.  It’s a basic human desire.  I’m just too much of a freak to fit in.  Being different is cool most of the time, but some days I just really want to be normal.

So I try on labels.  Maybe if I call myself Label X, I’ll be able to meet other people who are also Label X and I will have found my people.  I know it’s not as easy as that.  It’s just a stupid, stupid hope.  Maybe I am a little lonely…

Everybody in the U.S. has heard about the Congressional panel on the birth control rule — the one where they didn’t allow women to testify, despite the fact that 98% of women have used or do use birth control.  But here are some other gems:

• Arizona wants to pass a law that would allow employers to deny insurance or even fire a woman for using birth control.  It’s already passed one house.
• Kansas (and several other states) want to make laws that doctors can lie to pregnant women about their fetus’ health.   So even if the fetus isn’t viable or will have major health issues after birth, your doctor doesn’t have to tell you if s/he thinks you’ll abort the fetus.
• Georgia wants to pass a similar law, and one of their lawmakers compared women to livestock, saying that because animals have to give birth to dead fetuses, women should have to as well.

The Viking says this is the dying throes of a party who can’t get anyone to vote for them except for increasingly extreme religious right-wingers.  I hope he’s right.  I hope the Republicans lose everything.  Women deserve respect, not comparisons to cattle.

In one bright spot, 140 companies have pulled their ads from Rush Limbaugh’s show over the slut-shaming comments.  That cheered me up, anyway.  Nice to know advertisers can be pressured, unlike our lawmakers.

But.  Today we were listening to their new album Zodiac, and there’s a song on there about punk rock with “number 88″ repeated over and over.  I wasn’t aware, but skinhead punk bands often use the number.  It’s stupid — H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH, which stands for “Heil Hitler.”  Fucking stupid, yes?  And E6 uses “number 88″ in another song, “Countdown to the Countdown.”  There’s a whole thing on their web site about 88:

“There are 88 constellations in the sky.  There are 88 counties in the state of Ohio.  There are 88 keys on Tait Nucleus’ piano.  Zodiac is Electric Six’s 7th studio album.  7 multiplied by 88, multiplied by 88, multiplied by 88, divided by 12, to the power of 30, divided by zero……is zero. And now you see where this is going.

“Our bank accounts are sitting at zero.  We need to sell another record.”

I don’t know if they’re taking the piss about 88 or if they’re actually racists.  I didn’t think they were, but I really have no idea.  Google didn’t help me out when I went looking there.  They probably are making fun of it, but I really would like to know for certain…

The Viking suggested “genderqueer.”  I like it.  I think gender is fluid, and I don’t consider myself to be overly feminine.  Rather butch, actually.  I get called “sir” all the time when I’m out running errands, and I enjoy it.  Genderqueer also says “my sexuality isn’t particularly straight cis-woman,” which is good too.

Speaking of gender, I need to buy a couple new neckties.  My Cat in the Hat one, which I bought 15 years ago, is looking a little ragged.  Any suggestions for good ones?  Maybe I should try ThinkGeek.  Regardless of gender or sexuality, I am and will always be a geek!