File Under: Very Bad Marketing Decisions

Okay, so this morning the orange line in Boston was tied up and delayed for some reason that was not clear. Riders were being routed inefficiently and ineffectively by too few MBTA employees. I did not think that anything could top (bottom?) the CTA for its lack of communication during service interuptions, but the MBTA did it today for sure. Mid-morning, it was announced that there had been a bomb-looking thing--possibly an improvised explosive device--magnetically fixed to the underside of a bridge over which I-93 runs, right above the Sullivan Square station. The bomb squad handled it. They also handled the nine other devices being found on other bridges around the city. The Charles was closed to boat traffic and other bridges and roads were closed to cars, trains, and buses.

All of this activity, all of these thankfully minor inconveniences, all of these resources, and all of this fear? A GUERILLA AD CAMPAIGN FOR A TURNER NETWORK CARTOON.

Turner apologized, calling it part of a big "whoopsy." A whoopsy in ten cities including New York and Chicago.

This is neither cool nor funny, and I'd like to see a lot of lawsuits and fired executives. I don't care if the devices are innocuous and I don't care if the ads were for the determined "cool" Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We live in an age of terror and if our government wants us to be their eyes and ears, maybe cable companies ought to, I dunno, not emulate IEDs in their ad campaigns. It's over the line.

My body, the body, my body

Welcome to the second annual Blog for Choice Day. I'm coming in decidedly under the wire here at 10 PM Eastern. It's the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Court decision with its constitutional base in the right to privacy--a right that exists not in letter but, in Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' words, in the "penumbras" of five Amendments to the Constitution: the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth. It is our shadowy right to privacy that, among other things, makes warrantless wiretapping illegal, allows residents of some states to choose doctor-assisted suicide when it suits them, and gives women the endangered and never savoury option to legally medically terminate a pregnancy.

I am pro-choice. I have many reasons. At the core, I am pro-choice because it is my body. I've built it, I've changed it, I've made strong choices with it, and it is mine. I give it as I please and I keep it in the condition that pleases me. If I wish it to bear a child, I'll arrange that hopeful condition; since my body threw me a curveball last year, I may not have that hope, but that does not change the fact that I, as the sole curator of my built body, deserve to choose.

Because it is my body, I deserve the pleasures it provides. This is not limited to sex; this includes my right to tattoo whatever I want where ever I want. I own my parts and I own the metal in certain of them. I should be able to participate in safely administered body rituals if I please. I can wear my hair in whichever cuts and colours are possible and attractive to me. If I wish my tongue split I have the body right to find a practitioner who can provide such a service for me.

I should have these rights no matter what boundaries are forced on me by law or by other people. Because that's what it comes down to: my body is mine and it's not right for others to police the kind of body I am allowed (or the kind of woman I am at all, for that matter). It's nonnegotiable: it's my body.

That is why I am pro-choice. Because no one should issue orders to anyone else on the conscientious care and keeping of their personal meat-n-water bag.

The weakness of my argument is like that of many other arguments for or against abortion: if you do not agree with my basic statement, you'll not agree with the conclusion I draw from it. It's the same as "it's a person already." I'm finished trying to change the minds of people whose views are the exact base opposite of mine. We'll both just end up angry, screaming at each other, and I have far too much proofreading to do to spend my time arguing in that nonproductive manner.

Happy Birthday Roe.
(pun deliciously intended)

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For other participating bloggers, try the big list here.

New year, new meme

Salma put forth a new blog meme, and while I don't have the time at this red hot moment to complete the entire, soul searching, 40-question web quiz, I will answer one:

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I was in love with a place (in my mind, in my mind)/
I made a lot of mistakes (in my mind, in my mind)...

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Stopping through Chicago on the way to Iowa for a committment ceremony. No, silly, not that kind; they're just not actually getting married, but throwing the party like they are.

"Pop open a bottle of bubbly...

Here's to another gawdamned New Year."