Aikido and Feminism

Good grief, I've been quiet, haven't I?

Well, if you've been watching my Flickr stream, you know I passed my brown belt test. Tons of pix here. While I was testing, I thought I was doing terribly, but I'm always my own worst critic.

I also recently sent a link to one of my favorite essays on feminism of all time to a young woman on a message board where I occasionally hang out. She had, much to my dismay, said that she was not a feminist in a post espousing the idea that men and women are equal! So I sent her Yes, You Are, by the brilliant and hilarious Sars of TomatoNation. Here's a taste:

The definition of feminism does not ask for two forms of photo ID. It does not care what you look like. It does not care what color skin you have, or whether that skin is clear, or how much you weigh, or what you do with your hair. You can bite your nails, or you can get them done once a week. You can spend two hours on your makeup, or five minutes, or the time it takes to find a Chapstick without any lint sticking to it. You can rock a cord mini, or khakis, or a sari, and you can layer all three. The definition of feminism does not include a mandatory leg-hair check; wax on, wax off, whatever you want. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.

Yes, you are.

I don't make New Year's Resolutions anymore, but if I did, I'd probably include "to fight abuse and misuse of the word "feminist" wherever I find it."

Aikido and feminism are definitely connected for me. One of the reasons I'm so proud to have reached brown belt is that I'm one of only two women with this rank in my dojo. We have no higher-ranked women, either. The idea of a woman attaining high rank in a martial art -- even one as pacifist as Aikido -- is so unusual in our society that we have very few women at the dojo at all. There are a handful of teen gals who train, but most of them will probably go the way of other teen gals who trained there -- off to college, and off the mat.

Continued...

File under: Aikido, Feminism, Pure Ego!
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Flickr Meme

I got tagged by Turtle with a Flickr meme, woo! The idea is, you go to the sixth page of your flickr stream and post the sixth photo on the page, then tag six people. I'm not generally a tagger in memes, so if you read this, have a Flickr stream, and haven't done the meme yet, consider yourself tagged!

The above is one of the four quadrillion photos Dad took at my brown belt test, woo. It's a little weird-looking outside of the stream -- it's part of the set up for this hip throw.

File under: Memes
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NaNo 2008 = DONE

I made it! In spite of having to write 5k+ each of the last three days, I DID IT! WOO HOO!

Can't type much more, my wrists are dead. Will update my various badges tomorrow.

File under: Pure Ego!
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Twilight

"Hey, Ealasaid, are you gonna see Twilight"

I used to answer this with things like, "I'd rather take my eyes out with a spork" but now I'm thinking it might be worth going for the LULZ. The books are so despicably horrifyingly bad that I feel vaguely nauseated by them just from the beta-radiation I've gotten (Edward, the "perfect boyfriend" is abusive and dismissive, Bella is a spoiled idiot, etc.). But apparently the guy playing Edward in the movie hates the books. So that could be entertaining.

Anyway. If you have somehow missed the trunkloads of rantings others have done on why these books are so terrible, here's what I've been reading lately:

Misogyny in the books (and really, there's so much win in the comments to that post, I'm slowly working my way through all of them)
A rant on the beginning of the last book
Hilarious summary of the story, by an ex-Mormon (in case you didn't know, the author of the books is a devout Mormon, and apparently it kind of shows)
Another summary, with fewer pictures
A Nausea That Borders on Violence: Why Twilight is a Cancerous Sore on the Face of Literature

And, as I tweeted recently: Best description of "Twilight" EVER: "It's like what I was scribbling in my notebook in the back of math class in 9th grade."

And finally, this piece of fanart cracked me right up.

File under: Rantings
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NaNoWriMo: Day 11. Wordcount: 7513

Keerist, I'm so behind. My little NaNo spreadsheet is all cheery ("You've fallen a bit behind, but one or two more big pushes and you should be back in business.") but dude, I'm like 15k words behind, argh! FAIL.

So I decided to make my book more interesting, more exciting. I put a dead body in it! WOO! My intrepid heroine just found a corpse while investigating the cause of a bunch of dead bats. Go me.

File under: NaNoWriMo
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Olberman on Prop 8

I know this is making the rounds, but on the off chance any of my readers haven't seen it, here's what Keith Olberman had to say about Prop 8. I found it incredibly moving to see how upset he was, especially given that, as he says, he has no personal stake in this. He really gets it.

Transcript below the fold, for them as don't have headphones.

Please feel free to pass this around. Anyone who voted Yes on 8 needs to see this.

Continued...

File under: Political Schtuff
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I had a plate around here somewhere...

So, why am I behind on blogging and on my NaNo novel?

Here's what I have on my plate for the next month and a half:

- Try to nurse one of my beloved cats through what looks to be kidney failure (he's been getting subcutaneous fluids every other day since the beginning of last week, we're retesting his kidney levels on Wednesday)
- Test for Brown Belt (nikyu, test date is Nov 22 OMFG THAT IS IN JUST OVER A WEEK AUGH!)
- Host Thanksgiving
- Finish my NaNo Novel
- Officiate at the wedding of one of my oldest friends
- Do Christmas shopping
- Write Christmas newsletter
- Do Christmas baking (or decide not to do it, which would kind of suck)
- And, of course, work -- my full-time day job as well as my reviews and my one remaining tutoring student (though it looks like she may finally be leaving the nest after this semester!)

Every year around this time, I mutter that next year will be different! Next year I will make sure to have enough time for myself to actually relax and enjoy the holidays.

HAH!

File under: Pure Ego!
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NaNoWriMo: Day 7

Well.

If you've been watching my wordcount on the website, you'll know it hasn't moved since the day one writein. FAIL. Between the election and all the other crap on my plate (testing for brown belt, dealing with Mauser being sick, etc etc etc) I haven't had the mental energy to write.

Forced myself to hit 3k before eating lunch today, though, so that's something.

File under: NaNoWriMo
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Day after

We did it! Anyone really can be president.

I am so incredibly proud to have been a part of the campaign in my own small way.

It's looking like prop 8 will pass, which make me incredibly aggravated at my state. I am starting to think we need a Loving v. Virginia sort of ruling on the subject.

But you know what?

If we can elect a black man president, anything is possible. Gay rights will come, it is only a matter of time. We just have to keep fighting.

Volunteering for Obama kind of kicked my ass, but knowing I helped make a difference makes it all worthwhile. I look forward to volunteering for the Equality for All campaign or its equivalent in the next election cycle.

I am so hopeful for the nation today, I think I might have sprained my cynicism.

File under: Political Schtuff
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Politics

Well, I had a whole little entry written up here, but it got eaten by my browser (stupid plugins trying to protect me from the javascript in Movable Type, grr). It basically said: I was going to post earlier today about the election and urge everyone to vote, but I'm too tired. I'm sick of this damn election and want it to be over.

I gave mad props to my fellow Americans who voted, and extra props to those who voted Obama.

Then I politely suggested that anybody who voted for McCain, Prop 4, or Prop 8 do us both a favor and not tell me. Not for a while, at least. Especially not if any of those three actually win. Because my Deal With Douchebaggery meter is in the flashing red, and I consider a vote for any of those three a vote against pretty much everything I stand for. And if any of those three win, I am going to be pretty fucking pissed off. (For one of the best skewerings of McCain in a while, check out The Daily Show's segment on his use of air quotes. His use of scare quotes around the "health" of women makes me ill. The man has no respect for women at all. Also, there's a great No on 8 ad here. And another here.)

Tonight I'm sacking out with Antwon and watching feelgood TV interspersed with election coverage (hopefully the Stewart/Colbert coverage. I've heard rumors it's tape-delayed tonight, but I've also heard it will be live, so we'll see). And drinking. And praying.

File under: Political Schtuff
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IT BEGINS

Got my first day's wordcount at the first-minute writein. Good thing, cos I have NO idea when I'll be able to write next. GO ME.

Going home now, as I have to be at the dojo in the morning at TEN AY EM OH EM EF GEE for the Ikeda Shihan workshop.

File under: NaNoWriMo
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Rant: Abortion as a state's rights issue

So I was listening to an episode of Speaking of Faith recently, where a conservative was discussing religion and politics (it was a sequel to an episode with a liberal doing the same thing), and the guy was all on about being pro-forced-birth (or "pro-life" as he put it) and saying abortion should be regulated by the states.

I'm used to hearing that, but this time it made me do a double-take.

I mean, let me get this straight. This guy thinks that abortion is murder, but thinks that states should be able to decide if they punish it or not.

Continued...

File under: Feminism, Political Schtuff, Rantings
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Spammers = fail.

Man. Some jerkwad is using ealasaid.com in the return headers of spam. I'm getting oodles of bounces and no doubt am now once again on a bunch of blacklists.

If you're someone I email with regularly, please be sure to put me in your address book or on your whitelist or whatever.

File under: Geekiness
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Help Ealasaid raise money for the Office of Letters and Light!

Some of you will have already seen this in my blog/Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/whatever, but hey, cast a broad net, right?

Short version:
I'm raising money for the Office of Letters and Light, the folks who put on National Novel Writing Month (and loads of other fantastic creativity-encouraging programs) every year. Please donate! Even just $5 would be fantastic.

Sponsor me here.

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
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Drive for Change: Post-Mortem

Well, I survived!

Did some actual canvassing Sunday morning, then went back to the main office to do more data entry. Canvassing wasn't too bad, but it was kind of like playing Russian roulette: every time I knocked on a door, I didn't know whether to hope the person wouldn't be home so I could avoid talking to them or would be home so I could feel like I was contributing by collecting information.

By the end of the day I was punchy as hell -- I am just not cut out for the combination of exhaustion and people-fatigue inherent to that kind of work, I think. I made it home okay, though I missed the I-680 interchange completely and wound up going over the bridge into Martinez. Fail.

I really admire the people who work campaigns like that seven days a week for months in the lead-up to elections. They make all the difference in the world, and do amazing work. I don't think I could do that. Just the one weekend sort of destroyed me. I got ten hours of sleep last night and am still tired and cranky. I feel sort of bad that I'm not doing more, but I have already done more than a lot of people have, and that counts for something. At least I acted rather than sitting on the sidelines and crossing my fingers.

File under: Political Schtuff
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