It’s the weirdest thing because I’m not a stomach sufferer. But I’ve had this same thing 3 times since the beginning of October. It always happens at the same time of day, 1 pm Central Time. Suddenly, I get extremely nauseous and spend the next several hours barfing up a storm. Sorry for the TMI. The first two times I blamed it on school cafeteria food. But today I ate all the same things that N ate, and he’s perfectly fine. Thank God for his Mercy. 

I’m definitely not pregnant. I don’t have any other symptoms. But it’s hugely unpleasant and debilitating. Have I suddenly become a stomach sufferer in my dotage? I used to be able to digest deep-fried nails and follow them with a jar of benzoil. 

Does anybody have any idea what this might be? 

Don’t worry, folks. I’m in favor of net neutrality, of course. I just got very annoying and painful food poisoning that spoiled the last day of my vacation, and this made me very crabby. But now I’m back.

Yes for net neutrality!

NO net neutrality means that your service provider (comcast, at&t, verizon, whatever it may be) gets to say “ACTUALLY, it lines our pockets so give us an extra $5.99 for Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. Oh, but that doesn’t include Tumblr; that comes with our premium package. That’ll be $5.99 on its own as well. Now about your Google docs and email… 

That sounds fantastic, actually. Any stumbling block on the way to these nasty shits is great. I’m not sure the linked author with the infantile lilt describes it right, but if he does, I’m all for this “no net neutrality.”

There is an interesting discussion about weepers taking place on Facebook:

“In ancient Egyptian culture, mourning rites are associated with public expressions of emotions. These ritualized emotional manifestations concern the participants of the funerary rites as a whole, but even more specifically the feminine group of ‘weepers’. Among this group, some distinctive expressions of affliction can be observed: attitudes of sadness supported by particular words, or noisy and clearly organized demonstrative weeps and screams.”

Volokhine, Youri. « Tristesse rituelle et lamentations funéraires en Egypte ancienne », Revue de l’histoire des religions, vol. volume 225, no. 2, 2008, pp. 163-197.

In my culture (before it was wiped out by industrialization), people invited groups of female weepers into the house to help express grief during bereavement. The more women you could afford to invite to weep, the louder was the noise they made,the more prestigious was the dead person and your family. And it was a good way for older women to make some money and have some financial independence.

I had no idea the custom was as old as ancient Egypt but I think it’s curious to look at the inventive ways women, especially older ones, made a living throughout history.

I try to like Southwest but I can’t. They have the best flights for us but I hate the survival of the fittest approach they promote when they refuse to assign seats. I also hate it that they don’t seat people with small children first (or second, after the disabled). They also make it a lot harder to pre-board online than, say, AA. 

It’s funny but also kind of sad when people try so hard to tear down the underpinnings of the nation-state model while fully expecting the protections and guarantees that only the nation-state gives. 

“Go away, nation-state! You are genocidal and evil! Where did you go, nation-state? Why aren’t you fulfilling your promise to protect me, come what may?”

Consumers believe that the world owes them an unrepayable debt yet routinely forget that they might owe something back. They buy on credit and get mighty angry whenever the bill arrives. 

Masuma Khan isn’t a racist, a politician, or an ungrateful child of immigrants. She’s a consumer. She knows nothing and wants to know nothing but consumerism. But in spite of everything that commercial jingles say, consumerism isn’t bringing the promised bliss. The self that finds nothing bigger than its own desires is a sad and angry self. 

Masuma is angry because she is unwittingly destroying the only thing that stands between her and the scary, indifferent, cold winds of capitalist fate. And she’s doing it to remain faithful to the ideology of consumerism that is giving her nothing whatsoever. I’d be angry, too, if I found myself in such a hopeless trap.