Hawk's Aerie

Today while taking my walk, I ended up in an intersection with a male waiting for the light to change. I was talking with a friend on the phone, and noticed that he had angled himself to look me over like a piece of meat.

Hawk: crosses arms across chest and glares, while moving away from him.
Pervert: continues to obviously stare at my chest.
Hawk (talking on phone loudly): There's a pervert here looking me over. He's being incredibly skeezy staring me up and down.
Pervert: Moves behind pillar to make it look as if he's not looking me up and down.
Hawk (talking on phone loudly): No, he just moved behind the pillar thinking that makes him less of a slime ball. He's still starting at my T&A
Pervert: checks me out one last time and then slinks farther behind pillar so he can't actually see me.

My friend thought I should be flattered that he finds me good looking (guess I've lost enough weight, right!) but it's just sleazy and lewd. If it hadn't been a busy street corner, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd tried to put hands on me.

It is NOT a compliment when you're just walking on the street and get looked up and down and all around. This is not the first time it's happened to me, and unfortunately it's not going to be the last. Hopefully, by calling him out loudly and publicly, he'll think twice about his actions. Because, no matter what anyone says, it's not my responsibility to dress in a burqa to stop the male gaze. I shouldn't have to police my clothes to make sure that I'm not harassed. Men who are doing it (and women too - I've been sexually assaulted by a woman before at a friend's party) need to own their own behavior and not harass women. This isn't a woman problem, this is a harasser problem.

So let's start letting them know even more that their behavior is unacceptable. They need to be called out. And usually by someone who is like them; I'm just the "other". I'm the bitch that doesn't know how to take a compliment. I'm the frigid slut because I don't want to have their attention. I'm whatever excuse they want to make, to make it all about me not being willing to have their gaze/hands all over me. What if this had been a woman a little less sure of herself? Or too young to know how to handle it? I have nieces at the age that people like this start harassing. I don't want them to have to go through what I've had to. I don't want them to have to tell their friends "Oh, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't rape at least." [Yes, that's what I said to my friend on the phone when she was horrified that it had happened.] I want them to have the freedom to be able to not understand how it happens.

Amish's low asthma rates could be due to exposure to cow germs, study suggests
The Amish may be farming the cure for asthma in barnyard animals

Fascinating study. I hope that they can figure out the exact triggers and help with asthmatic cases.

Bird v Bird fighting action FTW?


From Tumblr

I've got music on in the background, and a random political satire song from the Capitol Steps came up. It's from their 1994 album "Stand by your Dan" entitled Gorby Gorbachev. The line that caught my attention was ..."there’s a guy who told that Donald Trump my schedule’s got no room..."

So it seems that the corridors of power know that Trump's been colluding with the Russian's for over 20 years. 😏

In the "you need to find something to laugh at so you don't start crying" category:
Duke’s fulmination is clarifying on a variety of points. First, it makes clear that the white supremacist has never actually eaten gefilte fish, because he thinks it’s something someone would want to win in a bet.

In World’s Least Surprising Twist, David Duke Blames Melania Trump’s Plagiarism on the Jews

1 down, and a second one decided to get into the IRS scam game. At least they pretended it was a different fake lawyer this time! Reblocked, FTC complaint in, this was seemingly called from the same number that they want you to call back on.

I went the full force of the united states government to fall on these people. For me, it's just a nuisance. For many people, they fall for it and can lose their savings.

They deserve pretty much any penalty they get if they are actually arrested.

Fascinating article. My spondylolisthesis can cause bad cramping, so it's always nice to read of ways to help prevent them.

A New Way to Prevent Muscle Cramps

I went on a bit of a gun rant on tumblr. I get really annoyed when incomplete statistics are used to justify gun regulations. We need gun regulation - don't get me wrong - but let's do it with the complete story rather than the scare tactics.

Due to a minor procedure on Friday I can't take any of my pain meds stronger than Tylenol. I didn't expect too much of an issue as things had been on a decent keel. Except today, I woke up and my back doesn't want to bend. At all. Ugh! Hopefully the heat pad I put on it will loosen it enough so I can do my stretches to be able to partially bend.

FML.

Reuters news article: Exclusive: Big data breaches found at major email services - expert

FYI, Google and Yahoo! are part of this breech. I have at least one friend affected by this. It was the kick in the pants I needed to set up two factor authentication on my Yahoo and Tumblr[1] accounts. Supposedly they’ll let affected accounts know, but who knows how long that will take.

Plus changing the passwords. Just in case. Even though I've had each account with it's own unique password for years now.

[1] As it's owned by Yahoo!, so who knows if it's mixed up in this or not.

I'm very fond of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - I make a point of trying to watch it every Tuesday. But tonight's - sheesh, heavy-handed enough?

( Spoilers for Spacetime, S3E15 )

We had friends over tonight to play some Cards Against Humanity with new cards I'd just picked up. One of our friends also brought over the game "SuperFight", which we quipped was "Like ComicCon, but without the lines".

I was willing to play it, but I've been to too many ComicCons - I figured it was going to get pretty tedious, pretty fast. It actually was pretty hilarious however, and we were laughing more for this than we were for CAH. After a long argument through one of the fights, I quipped "I'm a nerd, I've argued stupider!"

As an example of hands - my first fight hand was "My significant other" "Shooting Shotguns of Shotguns" which seemed to have a pretty good chance of defeating the hordes of hippies at Burning Man in a big hamster ball with too many groceries that had rolled over all the other hands. But when I had to choose my random adjective, I got "Literal Jazz Hands" and my SO was rolled into the giant hamster ball. :(

canyonwalker managed to win the game with the Kardashian's riding Mr. Rogers with a 200 mph fast ball vs my K-Pop star who shot blinding light from their hands and a fire hose of super glue.

All I'm saying is, if you can have a game that involves the wrongness of the Kardashian's riding poor Mr. Rogers, you gotta play it!