The invasion of the nauseatingly hot weather has arrived (I know it’s worse in other places, but relative to what we’re used to around here, this is icky). Yesterday was definitely pool weather – up around 90° and humid, and today is supposed to be even hotter. It’s already about 75° out there. Yesterday I could at least stay near the pool and hop in every ten minutes or so, but today I’m ostensibly working (albeit from home) so I won’t be able to do that (as much).
Plus my home office is hotter than hell. It faces due west and in the afternoon it gets pretty miserable. Too goddamn many computers, I think. Plus the little fridge. I’m still trying to find a way to add a/c, ‘cuz the ceiling fan just doesn’t cut it. Right now, my little wall thermometer says it’s 84° in here with a relative humidity of 85%. That’s a heat index of 96°.
I guess I could try putting together a homemade swamp cooler (basically get a tub-o-water, stick one end of a towel in it, and drape the rest of the towel over a fan). This is how Thomas Alva Edison saved the life of a neighbor child with a high fever, if the play I saw about him in sixth grade can be believed – though I don’t recall them mentioning that Edison executed Topsy the elephant because he was pissed that Tesla and Westinghouse’s AC beat out Edison’s DC.
Asshole.
Anyhow, so, yeah, it’s gonna be hot today.
So, are you a woman of childbearing age who doesn’t really want a kid right now but would still kinda like to get laid once in a while? Or maybe a woman who has a medical condition that would make it appropriate for you to take birth control pills? Or maybe a guy who knows (in the biblical sense) a woman but neither of you are really into having kids – at least not at the present time?
Bummer for you.
Well, bummer for you if work for one of the 82 or so “closely held companies” that are now planning to remove birth control from your health insurance plan, thanks to yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling.
I don’t think I’ll be patronizing Hobby Lobby anytime soon. Not much of a threat, I know, as I don’t tend to frequent “craft” stores. But if I ever need some styrofoam or a picture frame or some dried leaves or glitter or shit, I’ll be going to Michaels. Mostly ‘cuz they just closed and gutted the AC Moore by where I work.
Not that will exactly help any women who can’t afford birth control and work at Hobby Lobby. If anything, it would be to make things worse for them, really.
So I’m calling on all Hobby Lobby employees who are denied contraception and therefore get abortions to mail those aborted fetuses to:
Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
7707 S.W. 44th Street
Oklahoma City, OK 73179
Alternatively, you can send them to:
John Roberts c/o
The United States Supreme Court
1 First St NE
Washington, DC 20543
Of course, if it turns out that sending aborted fetuses via the US mail is illegal (say, it falls under the definition of medical waste or something), then you should not do that. Please check all applicable federal, state, and local regulations before sending anything via the USPS or across state lines.
Better yet, take a selfie with your aborted fetus, and e-mail or tweet it to Hobby Lobby, HL’s CEO and Founder, David Green, and/or SCOTUS. #ThanksHobbyLobby
And then post your pictures here (as long as they’re not too gross, please).
Of course if you don’t really care about the right to contraception, perhaps you care about the right to organize with your colleagues and form a union? Well, sucks to be you, too. Our activist Supreme Court also voted to allow scabs to opt out of paying union dues (or shop fees if they don’t want to join a union). So they can reap all the benefits that come from banding together and being able to negotiate from at least a slightly stronger position than would otherwise be possible without having to support the process. So they can save a few bucks today and the cost of major bucks (and decent working conditions) tomorrow.
I’d say people aren’t stupid and short-sighted enough to fall for that, but, well, I’ve seen the people out there and it aint a pretty picture.
I just thank goodness I live in NY and not, say, Arkansas or Mississippi or Texas something (I’d throw OK in there, too, but you already have Hobby Lobby and the likes of Tom Coburn and James Inhofe on your hands, and I don’t want to pile on).
Oh well, time to make the coffee, I guess. It’s almost time to get to work.
Damn, no MS Blog scrapbook? WTF?
My sister who relocated to OBX-NC might be in for an early baptising by TD Arthur for the holiday. The map looks like it is heading right up the Eastern seaboard so maybe she will be OK. Sometimes they veer east in deference to the holy prayin’ power of Pat Robertson up the way in Va. Beach.
#ThanksHobbyLobby
Am I correct in saying that the prohibition of birth control is based on God saying to someone, “I knew you in the womb. Is there more to it? Is it the spilling your seed stuff? Because if it is then it would seem only men can’t use contraception .
Nope. Spilling your seed is about masturbation. I guess you gals can do that all you want.
So what is the justification for the religeous opposition to birth control? There have always been methods that women have used to try to control their own fertility. The church has always spoken with certiftude that God is in opposition. How do they know? Are they taking the word of some Jerry Falwell type who speaks to God (God apparently can only speak to one person at a time) or is there some scripture on the subject.
I do not profess to know the mind of God (or the mind of the morons who profess to know the mind of God, which I think I read somewhere is sacrilege, or at least really stupid), but I assume it has something to do with preventing conception when only God should be capable of preventing conception, though you would think that what with God being all-poweful and shit that H/She would be able to overcome whatever feeble contraceptive device and/or medication and be able to plant the old seed anytime/anywhere He/She wants.
But I dunno. Maybe “god” needs to be invited in like a vampire or something?
Having seen firsthand how Hobby Lobby treats their injured workers, I assure you that the issue over contraception has to do with money and not ideology. They are a bunch of evil doers.
Guys, should you become jealous of your wife and believe (rightly or wrongly) that she is pregnant, God has a way to cause a miscarriage. And, he put it in the bible:
Numbers 5:11-31New International Version (NIV)
The Test for an Unfaithful Wife
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.
16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”