Nec Hoc Nec Ilud

* The Court has decided in favor of Mr. Muñoz. The Hospital is to turn over his dead wife to him by Monday. Odds are the hospital will appeal as it's good money they are making keeping her corpse on all those machines. *fingers crossed that the Courts will stand firm*

* "It Is Expensive to Be Poor:" http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor/282979/

* "Little has changed year after GOP's planned reboot:" http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_REPUBLICANS_OUTREACH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-21-03-06-46

* "Discovery of oldest footprints gives clues to Mexico's climate:" http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-oldest-footprints-clues-mexico.html

* "Archaeological dig turns up artifacts 8,000-years-old:" http://www.kare11.com/story/news/local/2014/01/03/archaeology-chanhassen-shakopee-dig-artifact-spear-point-bison-hunters-gatherers/4309619/

* "Danish finds reveal rare glimpse of Neolithic life:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2014/danish-finds-reveal-rare-glimpse-of-neolithic-life

* "3500-year-old tombs with hand-holding couples found:" http://news24online.com/3500-year-old-tombs-with-hand-holding-couples-found_LatestNews24_32213.aspx

* "3,000-year-old tombs bear secrets of ancient Zeng State:" http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/202936/8501534.html

* "Early medieval burials and Bronze Age barrows found in Poland:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2013/early-medieval-burials-on-bronze-age-barrows-found-in-poland

* Caveat: This misrepresents the struggle between Carolingian heirs as if they had primogeniture instead of partible inheritance. "Massacre in the well – a 1200 year old murder mystery:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2013/massacre-in-the-well-a-1200-year-old-murder-mystery

* "Raising a horn to Nordic drinking heritage:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2014/raising-a-horn-to-nordic-drinking-heritage

* "Ancient relics dug up in Kowloon:" http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1395272/ancient-relics-dug-kowloon

* Hector's morning tantrum involved him attacking my arm repeatedly as if it was a rat, then hurling a big container of soy sauce on the floor. It was quite the mess. So as not to encourage him I read in bed with Mache for a couple of hours, then went to clean up. In the afternoon, I went to do bureaucracy, which took most of two hours between the wait and the document hunt once we discovered that the problem was whoever processed my document stack failed to grasp that HOA dues are a housing cost like rent or mortgage payments are. They thus disallowed my housing expenses and circular filed my HOA receipt as extraneous. Luckily, I am incredibly thorough with my documentation and I was able to find a line item on another document proving the HOA payments exist. Discovering the problem ad solving it took about 45 minutes. I pity the poor bastards in line behind me and can only hope the other interviews were going faster at the other windows doing the same things. I got my food stamps back to full, instead being cut to 2/3rds.

I then went treasure hunting safe condiments for Squirrel, as he is on a new restrictive diet with little to no guidance. I promised to check the Co-Op and/or Trader Joe's to see if they had replacements, and the smaller Co-Op branch was right there. I found the one, count them one, safe option in both categories. Let's hope he likes them. I then tried to do another errand, which failed, but in the course of failing, the nice lady asked how the moving saga was going and I told her of my trouble finding a small cheap mover willing to take a dozen items or so one country block. (What I need it too strong people and a van). It turned out she knew a guy. We are penciled in for next week. Now to clear space for the furniture, for which I need spoons.

In both these cases I suspect it was my prep school manners paying off. While I don't enjoy small talk, I am super polite to people helping/waiting on me. While I have the deep contempt for the born rich and generaly over-entitled that comes from deep familiarity, I've done a hell of a lot of shitty service industry jobs, so for them I break out the full arsonal of surface polish as a thank you for coping with all the other assholes they have likely had to deal with in the last week. It is unironic. I truly believed that for the most part the folks I am dealing with are painfully underpaid for the hard work they do and the insults they likely have to eat with a smile on the regular basis. In these situations, I pull out the surface polish. I am charming and polite. I listen to stories and toss in my own when appropriate. As is customary in my family, I also show full deference for age where appropriate, and there is all that childhood practice fishing for stories. I suspect it works because I really do mean it as a thank you rather than in hopes of something turning up to my advantage in an often indefinite future. I am pretty sure that the good manners and story fishing got me the extra nine yards on finding the missing documentation and I know that my having built a good relationship with the other lady over the course of a couple of years lead to her asking about and solving my moving problem. I understand stress and frustration making people rude, but I've never understood the way so many people are assholes to people who are helping them just because they can be. It's cruel to harm someone who is not allowed to harm you back, as is the often the case with people in jobs dealing with the public, and there are always ways they can get you back. (I worked food service. Trust me there are all sorts of ways they can get you back without getting fired. In other non-food situations and can be a matter of the difference between them giving you a bare minimum of help or gladly going all out). It is not worth it, and I'd rather be the customer/client/patron they feel good about at the end of the day, than the person who made their day and by extension the day of other people around them worse. I'd rather be the one who brings smiles and gratitude, than the one they argue about who's turn it is to serve that asshole this time. It costs nothing and everyone feels better after. I do not do it in the hopes of getting anything, though I don't say no when it results in the smoothing of my path. It feels earned in a way that the things offered me because I was good looking did not. Those things always felt unclean and I generally turned them down. Now that I am not what I was I can be fairly sure people are nice to me because I am nice to them. It is often harder without that particular brand of privilege greasing my way, but I like it better.

I suspect the guy waiting behind me who made a point of telling them how stupid he thought they were saw their inability to solve his problem as more proof of their stupidity. I took it as a sign that they weren't going to bend rules for an asshole demanding they do it and insulting them all at the same time. When I was teaching, the more obnoxious a student was in demanding rather than asking, they less likely I was to change my mind, bend a rule, or do whatever else it was they wanted. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it works the same at social services, where there is only limited wiggle room, but what is there is clearly in their gift. They were terribly polite with him and gave him a number to call to complain when they sent him away. I likely would have done the same. There was no excuse for talking to them that way before they had a chance to know what his problem was, let alone see if they could fix it.

* Hector was still in full tantrum when I got home and it went on and on. Squirrel was out and the girls following me around, so I ended up locking Hector in Squirrel's room as he has a litter box etc. in there. The girls kept me company as I started tackling the kitchen. I distributed extra goosh to all three as "Meow Luau" had not gone over well. The whole process was calmer with Hector locked up, and it was easier for the girls to enjoy their food without the histrionics. After they'd all had firsts, I let him out for cat group nap. I've got two more kitchen unpacking segments to sort out before sleep. Sigh.

* "GOP bets on abortion issue despite gender gap:"

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* "Shaken town eyes fracking for spate of quakes:"

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* ALEC and the GOP War on Voting:

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* Sexism and Politics:

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* "A new ad from the Kentucky senator is worlds away from Tea Party-style rhetoric, but leaves out a lot of details."

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* Best of luck to Mr. Muñoz in his case against the hospital keeping his dead wife on a ventilator against her and his wishes and at his expense, since women in Texas are mere incubators under the law, rather than people with rights. I hope he wins the case to have the machines turned off. I hope he then sues the shit out of them both for the expenses he has incurred and for the suffering they have inflicted on him and his family.

* "Ellis Act Evictions:" http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/ellis.html

* "Surveillance and Scandal: Time-Tested Weapons for US Global Power:" http://www.thenation.com/article/178000/surveillance-and-scandal-time-tested-weapons-us-global-power#

* "King Tut's Mummified Erect Penis May Point to Ancient Religious Struggle:" http://www.livescience.com/42290-king-tut-mummified-penis-explained.html

* Unpacking the use of the word "thug."

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* "Fraternity throws racist MLK day party:" http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/01/23/ac-ridiculist-fraternity-suspended-for-mlk-party.cnn-ap.html

* Remember how I was gender policed at the Neptune in Seattle? This is the account of my friend who was also harassed. "There Is No Bathroom: The Night Vale Edition:" http://greenwick.livejournal.com/267010.html

* So I went to the stupid gatekeeper appointment, which turned out not to be covered by Medicare. They assigned me their LGBT Specialist, which is logical, but Medicare is kind of an asshole about what mental health they cover. The result was a waste of my time and theirs, which can be said about the whole gate keeping process. I have to start over with a covered, non-specialist therapist Tuesday. There was a crisis going on back there, so I spent an hour and a quarter reading in the lobby with my war face on. I do not begrudge a person in crisis the extra time. Still, it prolonged the unpleasantness and I suspect it will take me hours to be as close to human as I get again, since I was shut down so long. I had more paperwork to file on the way out in case the other therapist won't take me, plus I had to gimp across the lot to drop off paper at a diferent bureaucratic office for an unrelated matter.

* I'm pretty sure it was as I swept back into the building to use the elevator up to where I parked my car that something dawned on me. I'd been watching the Sherlock season 3 Premiere before I left home for the errand, see. I thought about Mr. Cumberbatch's precision in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, the stillness that bursts into sudden controlled motion, the mask of his face with it's subtlety of expression, of the emotional distance and subtle alieness he conveys. I thought about how I am in survival mode, in war mode: the not quite military precision of my movements left over from all that dance and martial arts training, blunted slightly by the spinal damage; the stillness punctuated by sudden deliberate motion, the enigmatic mask of my face, the emotional distance, the subtle alieness that has unnerved any number of people starting with my adult interrogators when I was eight. No wonder Mr. Cumberbatch's Sherlock felt so familiar. No wonder his version holds my fascination in a way other versions can't, not even Robert Downey Jr.'s excellent one, that I consider to be the most authentic of them. So few glimpses of even small aspects of myself turn up in books or media, that even a faint glimpse in distorted fragment or a passing shop window grabs my attention even if it' only subliminally. The thing I wondered as I road the elevator up was if Sherlock is not a sociopath, even though he says he is and looks like one. I wonder if he developed his war face under the pressure of living with his horrifying and creepy perceptive brother. I wonder if he built everything in his life including his persona the way he did to keep distance he absolutely required to survive as something separate and reasonably whole. Essentially, it occurred to me that while there were differences in detail, the pressures that led my to evolve as I did could have shaped the Sherlock character in similar ways if he were a real person. Similarly, given Sherlock's canonical back story, he might not have seen a reason to learn how to be human again, as I did at fifteen, but that perhaps the events in the season premiere might have shown him a reason for the first time in his life. What if all anyone has ever seen is his war face? It took me years of hard work and practice to learn how to surface, to turn most of the defenses that kept me alive off. I think about how Mycroft is always THERE in Sherlock, even when he isn't, the way he is always watching, monitoring, manipulating, testing, endlessly testing his little brother. I think about what it was like when I was small and adults were always ambushing me with interrogations so that I had to always be on guard and in character lest I be caught off guard until I became my mask. Any sign of emotion could be used against me, so I learned to shut things down and make what I was feeling invisible and where that wasn't possible, make them look like different emotions. I am not a sociopath, but I sure looked like one back then.

It works for me and I'm considering it my head cannon.

* As to the Premiere itself, I'm not ready to talk about it. I need to do a whole lot more thinking and watch it at least once more if not several times. There is so much to think about, I'm not sure where to start.

* "Behold, The Noodle Copter!:" http://makezine.com/projects/make-37/behold-the-noodle-copter/

Today's post didn't, but you can read it here: http://gwyd.livejournal.com/1450860.html