Three weeks without coffee and so forth

Depressed teen/abandoned factory
Originally uploaded by katherine of chicago

[This one’s personal, and political. There’s a new exploration-related post right before this one, with all non-Flickr photos, but they’re rather bland. In case you want to read about something else.] Personal: I’ve now gone three weeks without coffee, regular tea, or caffeinated pop. I stopped it on a whim, because someone I know (who’s never had coffee, and no, he’s not a Mormon, everyone asks) kind of suggested it, or rather, he pointed out how it’s easier to not start on caffeine in the first place so you won’t become dependent on it. This isn’t the first time I’ve temporarily given it up, so it isn’t just “changing yourself for a man,” as my friend Kate suggested when we were at Reading Under the Influence Wed. night, heh. I’m doing okay, even though I’ve been to many new (and old) family restaurant/snack shop-type places recently and I’d ALWAYS order coffee at them…it doesn’t feel right. The “herbal coffee” I got at Whole Foods the other day, (Vanilla Nut) Teeccino is shockingly drinkable, I’m having some right now. I’ll be back on the poison after trying a month without it.

Political: My favorite political blog Feministing is raising some funds now (to become more of a "community" site, which means I could try to promote this blog there); I should contribute. If they could reduce their recent dependency on ads, it’d be great. Kind of jarring to see a big Sears ad with the line “Get the ‘I’m So Happy I Could Cry But I’m a Guy’ reaction” in the midst of all the gender-stereotype-breaking. Anyway, I’m borrowing a couple links from them. No mainstream news about the death of Senator Henry Hyde (his funeral was today) will mention Rosie Jimenez so it’s up to blogs to do so. And if only the major media (especially NBC/MSNBC, who seem especially fixated on the story) would throw in a mention of, say Latasha Norman at least once for every 20 mentions of Stacy Peterson, please? The horrific mass shooting at the mall outside Omaha led to the obvious network TV pieces about “are YOU safe at the mall?” and the easy title, “massacre at the mall,” but I was particularly amused/horrified by some woman (possibly a therapist) The Today Show had on as an expert. So she’s trying to make the point that the U.S. has been all hopped up about outside terrorist threats for years when the real danger is right here (a point I mostly agree with). So what’s the real danger? “Our kids are killing us!...These teenagers are terrorists!” Is that not a tad overblown? Violent crime by juveniles (actually, this guy was 19, so this is like articles on teen pregnancy that don’t point out the largest number of pregnant teens are 18-19) is not exactly the majority of crime. Anyway, I’ve obviously been watching too much TV news this week (and listening to too much NPR, though they barely touched the mass shooting, not even to make a point about failures of foster care/group homes/the mental health system, all the things the shooter had much experience with).

I promise the next post will be cheerier. Sort of.