Aslaug's Axe Shed

I suppose it’s only fair that I got to feel the financial crisis as well, but fairness aside, I would’ve preferred to avoid that situation.

Two days ago, I came home from work to probably the nastiest surprise I have had in many years. In my mailbox was a letter from a bank I used to use years ago, called Arbejdernes Landsbank. Suffice to say that my experiences with that bank were so bad that for more than three years I refused to open a bank-account ANYWHERE. The letter in my mailbox confused me, because the last I had heard from these people was eight years ago, when I was teeter-tottering on the edge of insanity and I was such a nervous wreck that I was in constant danger of getting hospitalized on suicide watch.

Back then, that bank loaned me money. I mean, that in itself is not a good thing. It was hardly a secret that I was in treatment for transsexuality, and I doubt anyone who met me for more than five minutes were unaware of the state of my mind. They still let me take out loans. Not huge ones, but big enough that I ended up in trouble paying them back. That happened because I had to quit my education back then. I was too sick to attend, and so I ended up on wellfare but because I was still only 24 years old, I wasn’t elligible for more than HALF the wellfare rate. The maddening reason for that is, that legislaters assume that when you’re under the age of 25 your parents can then help support you. Nevermind the fact that some people don’t HAVE parents. Nevermind the fact that some people have parents who THEMSELVES are on wellfare, or as in my case…have parents who at the time wanted nothing to do with me. So I had only 3500 kroner every month on which to survive. Thankfully, my Grandmother helped me month after month, out of her very meagre pension, or I’d have been in every kind of trouble. Even with her help, I was in a very tight spot. My rent was 1800 kroner a month, and the bank demanded 500 kroner on the loan. That left me with 1200 kroner every month to buy everything else for. Food, clothes, you name it. That meant I was living at about two thirds of what was officially deemed subsistence minimum at the time, and the only way I managed was, as mentioned, because my grandmother helped me out completely unselfishly.

So I went to the bank and told them…’look, in six months I turn 25, and I will get the full amount and I can pay you your 500 kroner a month, no problem. But right now, I can’t, but I want to show some good will so can I pay you 200…maybe 250 a month until then?’. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a lot…250 kroner is 50 dollars or so…but when you are THAT POOR it’s a small fortune and would have made a world of difference for me.

Sadly, my bank advisor back then told me, to my face, to keep paying the 500 kroner every month…or else!

I had no choice but to take the ‘or else’. So it ended up in court. Sick as I was, I couldn’t go there myself, so my social-worker went on my behalf. This is where the conundrum starts. The way I understood things, the bank had to give up on getting the money back. It was out of the way, done…finito. I could breathe more easily, and forget about it. I now realize that was my sickness convincing me that this was what happened. In reality, what happened was that the bank (represented by smarter people than my usual bank-advisor), agreed to set aside my case for a number of years, until I got better. But they weren’t giving up on getting their money. In those eight years, they’ve drawn interest for three of them, and the amount they now say I owe them is up to 31.200 kroner.

Pay up!

Needless to say, I was badly shocked. Who among us has 5-6.000 dollars laying around, just like that? I sure as shit don’t, if you’ll pardon my language.

I didn’t panic, but I did get very upset and quite angry, and I immediately started calling around. I got a hold of my father, my brother, my boss and a number of other people. So yesterday I had the day off to get this thing taken care of.

Fortunately, you see, the bank also included in the letter, an offer to pay one third of the amount I owed them … 10.400 kroner … in one go, and that’d take care of it. I’d get a receipt and we’d be even, permanently and for good.

I think anyone would agree with me that they’d rather pay off 10.400 kroner than 31.200 kroner. Simple logic. The problem, of course, is that I don’t have 10.400 kroner laying around EITHER. That’s pretty much all I get for a whole month, including what I need for rent and food and … so … on …

Does this start to sound familiar? It sure does to me.

Fortunately, my parents and my brother are helping me. I’ll get the money together and pay these people and be done with it, but I hate having my past come up and bite me like this. I especially hate that this is probably the reason why my credit history has been so bad and why my current bank are so unwilling to loan me money. THEY could see this when looking up my credit situation, but no one told ME about this, and so I remained in the wrongful belief that this ancient loan was long gone.

I wonder if I’ll ever get my life on track after those nine years of absolute chaos where my mind went squab-kaburdle-whoop-whoop-yippee-where’smypinkpill-sblotch!

I’m tired of getting beaten down at least.

 

 

I have two things to talk about today.

The first concerns my last few blog entries … the blog entries I wrote about the American Election.

I really want to hammer home the understanding that I respect people’s rights to their opinion, so long as that opinion doesn’t involve the need of causing harm to other people or the world in general. However, I want others to extend the same courtesy not only to me, but everyone as well.

When I speak of the Autobot-vs.-Decepticons mentality of the GOP, I don’t expect Republican voters to agree with me. I would like it if they don’t expect me to share their views in return.

If we all had to feel the same, think the same and vote the same, we would be living in North Korea.

And this isn’t about Democrats or Republicans because truth be told, I think both those parties are way, WAY too right wing for me on most issues, although I do agree with the democrats on MORE issues than the Republicans (No-brainer-alert).

It’s not even about the myriad of tiny political parties in the United States that never see a chance of actual representation, be it the Green Peace party, the Libertarians, the Communist Workers of America … or whatever.

I reserve the right to think and feel the way I do, just as I think others have the same right in return.

Because of that, I am deeply saddened when I do end up in heated arguments over political views. On my forum, I have some rules about politics and, in particular, religion. Both can be discussed and debated there … I’m not a tyrant and I’m not a political censor’s pen … but I want any such debates to happen in a mature and calm way. I want people to extend that respect I spoke of above to each other, and I want people to understand that it is actually an integral, necessary part of any working republican or even democratic system (and I am not talking about the political parties here, but the basic political systems) to have differences of opinion. Otherwise, we’re talking a dictatorship and very few people want to live under that.

Hence, I am ashamed of myself that I actually got so riled lately, that I allowed myself to get into what was rapidly degenerating into a mudslinging contest … right there, on my own damned forum. Shame on me for not having caught it earlier. Shame on me for not stopping myself, for not backing up and saying ‘okay, this is a bad idea’ two posts earlier.

I should have.

Certain political and/or religious topics are supercharged. They are dry powder kegs, standing in the middle of a Californian forest-fire. They’re the equivalent of playing hackeysack with a bottle of nitroglycerine. I know these this to be the case, and yet I got yanked into such a debate anyway. I’m sorry for it, to any of you who read what went on. I will try harder to avoid that in the future. I can’t promise I’ll always succeed but I can promise I’ll try.

Bottom note, and I will let that be the last thing I say in this round of comments about the presidential election of November 4th, 2008, is that I don’t think the right man won. But that was not because I wanted the other guy to win.

I don’t think the right man … or woman … ran.

So of the lesser of two evils, I supported the man I believe stands closer to my opinions on issues central to my being and close to my heart, and I will vehemently defend this step to the world. I didn’t vote … I am not an American citizen, so I couldn’t … but if I had been able to, I would have voted for Barack Obama. I would have voted FOR his policies on a small number of issues, such as healthcare … and I would have voted AGAINST John McCain and particularly Sarah Palin because of a large number of issues such as education, healthcare, abortion, gay rights and so on.

I would not have voted for anyone becuase I agreed with them to a great extent, because a politician I agree with would likely be shot in a matter of moments in a country like the United States which combines almost rabid anti-socialist sentiment with the right of any Tom, Dick and Harry to buy military grade hardware and store them in his living room.

As with all elections, we will now get to see whether the candidate who won is going to make good on the promises, and sadly, they rarely do.

That was the first issue.

The second is a man named Keith Olbermann.

Keith Olbermann is a prominent television personality on the American network station NBC. I don’t expect non-Americans to know who he is, and for all I know there may be some of my American readers who are willing to swear on a mountain of assorted holy scripture that he’s evil incarnated.

To me, he’s a hero.

Why?

I’ll tell you why.

Keith Olbermann uses humor. In fact, I have watched a large number of snippets of his broadcasts and a few longer segments, and he pretty much embodies the paraphrased expression ‘no-one is sacrosanct’. He’ll crack a joke about just anyone. He’ll humiliate crooked politicians and self-serving religious nutcases no matter who they are, from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush (just to take two extremes of the spectrum).

In fact, I haven’t seen him get serious on more than a couple of occasions, because apparently, he subscribes to the ideal that if you can get people to laugh with you, you can make them listen to you. Smart man, if you ask me.

So when I found a snippet this morning, on a blog I read every time it’s updated, called ‘Special comment on gay marriage’ (look it up on youtube, everyone…’special comment on gay marriage – keith olbermann’) I was completely gobsmacked to see this exuberant, extrovert personality sitting there, with a voice so thick with tears it sounds like he’s about to break down any moment, lambasting … HAMMERING … those who voted for Proposition 8 in one of the most personal, furious assaults on viewers in recent television history … I wanted to hug the man.

I wanted to give him a civic award medal or something along those lines. I don’t know what the appropriate action would be, but I know I wanted to let him know how much it meant to me to see that.

Normally, I would sit back and say ‘Oh, but he’s never going to reach any of the people who actually DID vote yes on Prop 8, because they won’t watch his show. NBC is too liberal a channel for such people to watch it’, but in this case it’s not the case. California voted for Obama. It is ALLEGEDLY the biggets bastion and stronghold for the Democrats in the United States (not really the case, since they elected Ah’nuld as governor, but whatever), and it is famed all over the world for its free spirits. Since so many people voted for Obama in that particular state, yet voted for Prop 8, there is a good chance that many of the people voting in favor of that accursed piece of legislation consider themselves liberals and would watch NBC.

Ergo, there is a reasonable chance that Keith Olbermann actually reached some of the people who voted in favor of Proposition 8, and there is a good chance they had to actually watch while their skewed, self-righteous ‘morality’ was hung, drawn and quartered on national television. They had to sit there and watch while he attacked them personally, as egotistical, unintelligent and completely unaware of their own history.

One particular point he made (and I really do urge you all to go look up that piece on Youtube … it is remarkable television) … was that until 1967, 16 states in the United States of America had laws forbidding blacks and whites from marrying. If we go further back, blacks couldn’t even marry other blacks, because they were property. Their marriage vows didn’t say ‘until death do you part’…but until ‘death or distance do you part’. Their marriages were not legally binding. They were not granted protection of the law for their relationship, and this … most importantly … was considered absolutely right and true by white people.

If people hadn’t REDEFINED MARRIAGE back then, such marriages would still be illegal. If people hadn’t stood up and said ‘of course black men and women should have the right to marry whoever they fall in love with’, we would still be living in a corner of Ku Klux Klan paradise. If people hadn’t stopped their racial NONSENSE back then, black marriages would still be considered IMMORAL.

In 1935, Hermann G??ring stood on the podium in Nuremburg and REDEFINED MARRIAGE, by bombastically proclaiming the laws for the protection of German honor and German blood. This included a ban on all marriages involving jews. It did, in fact, mean that marriages between Jews and non-Jews were abolished by law. After all, such marriages were IMMORAL, and consequently, all such marriages across Germany were declared null and void, and from one day to the next, thousands of people found themselves divorced by law, whether they still loved each other or not.

But it is okay to do the same thing to 18.000 gay men and lesbians in California in 2008, isn’t it?

Because not doing so would mean REDEFINING MARRIAGE…

Because their love is IMMORAL…

Go watch Keith Obermann, people … and then think long and hard. Whether you support gay marriage or not … think long and hard.

Thank you for reading.

…since the American election and the most immediate hysteria is slowly fading away.

It feels strange, not waking up to news every morning about this or that candidate having won this or that primary or leading by so and so many points in the polls. I’d gotten used to it … again. Just like I always do when an American election takes up fifty percent of all airtime and an equal amount of newspaper space.

It’s been almost a week now, since Barack Obama won the presidential election and the elephant-shaped skeletons are still falling out of the Republican closets, but hey…that’ll pass. In four years, the election-race will be on again and we’ll see the same kind of hype yet again.

It doesn’t change. It never changes. And I have no doubt that in four years, we will yet a campaign innundated in religious drivel that should never have been a factor in a secular election in the first place. I rarely use such volatile language, as most of you know, but it makes me want to vomit all over the place whenever I have to listen to American politicians invoking God, or declaring that something or other is the right way of doing things because the bible says so.

The bible is over sixteen hundred years old, if we are talking the bible in a form recognizable by modern day Christians, written at a day and age where life was lived according to laws none of us today would WANT to live by. A day and age where violence was endemic to society, where aggressive warfare was not outlawed, where killing people for being different was absolutely acceptable and in many cases desirable, and where ‘modern amenities’ meant having a hole out back to shit in, rather than doing so in a hole inside the house in which you lived.

This book was written at such a day and age. The Koran was written not that many centuries later, and whether Muslims believe the book was dictated by God or not is irrellevant to me. I don’t believe it was, and I choose to perceive it as a historical document being abused in the most atrocious ways even today.

Religion belongs in the hearts and minds of those who believe, NOT in the public sphere. NEVER in politics and CERTAINLY NEVER in Government. Ever. At all. Under any circumstance.

George W. Bush has shown us with all undesirable clarity what having an Evangelical as president means. In Iraq, the first words of the new constitution states that no law passed by parliament may be in conflict with the word of Islam. A similar set of rules exists in Afghanistan.

The world still insists that thought processes that were valid a thousand years ago are good and proper for leading the world of today, and frankly, it’s disgusting.

During the November 5th elections, this cost many people a -lot-. In Florida, Arizona and most famously in California, people voted in favor of permanently banning gay marriage. People voted in favor of removing civil rights from a segment of the population.

You know when that last happened in a major, western country?

Yep, you got it. It happened in the 1930′s in Germany.

I am not comparing the United States of America of today with Nazi Germany. Gods forbid. That would be a ridiculous comparison on so many levels it’s not even funny anymore, but it doesn’t change the fact that what the voters in Florida, Arizona and California did was institute a measure of outright fascism into their state legislation.

“You are not as good as the rest of us, and therefore you cannot have the same rights as the rest of us. We are good. You are bad. Suffer the consequences or join us.”

That … ladies and gentlemen … is fascism 1.01.

What angered me though … what made me get really, really, really angry in this case … was the way it was presented in California. To hell with Florida and Arizona in this case. I doubt anyone really EXPECTED the majority in those two states to be anything but homophobic, but in California, allegedly the most openminded state in America??

And why??

Because of a load of crock about marriage being taught in schools. So if marriage is taught in schools, kids would also have to learn about homosexuals getting married.

OH THE HORROR. THE KIDS WILL CATCH ‘THE GAY’!!

FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES. HEAD FOR THE HILLS. ‘THE GAY’ IS COMING TO TAKE THE CHILDREN!!

This is RIDICULOUS. It’s nonsense, it’s bullshit, it’s pathetic and it’s LYING. First of all, kids are not hurt by being told that there are more ways to live one’s life than the obvious. In fact, that may help make kids less prejudiced and less hateful. But the fact of the matter is, that according to people WORKING with teaching children, marriage isn’t taught. It’s not as if schools take out a week of their curriculum, reserving it for ‘marriage-week’.

It’s horseshit!

But what is so utterly depraved, loathesome, vile and … yes, I will use the word … evil, is that this is homophobia disguised as caring for children. This is essentially about grown people who are so bloody afraid of standing up and saying ‘We hate homosexuals. We think you’re disgusting and you shouldn’t be allowed to live like you do under the law’, that they will hide behind children aged 7 to 9. Grown men in suits, cowering behind kindergardeners, because they are too afraid of being labeled homophobes to at least stand up straight and admit to their own filthy bigotry.

I PITY the children … who are being held hostage by the VERY people who claim to be protecting them from ‘The Gay’. I PITY the children … who are being used as a weapon to remove civil rights from one in thirteen people. I PITY the children … who may one day grow up to learn that they were used in such a filthy, depraved and perverse way, without having had any say in the matter themselves. I PITY the children … who may, in many cases, be very sad that they were ‘protected’ in such a way.

I PITY the children … who in some cases WILL grow up to one day turn out to be homosexuals themselves, only to learn that the people ‘protecting’ them … also took away their rights as citizens of California.

The people behind this should be ashamed of themselves. They should have enough courage to stand up and admit to their own homophobia and leave the children alone.

But they won’t.

Because they are cowards and because they are liars.

And for that, I will always despise them.

I had just come home from a two day seminar in Copenhagen. After a cross-country trek in an overstuffed train, conversing with a nice young fellow who was headed for Sweden for a week-long wilderness trek, I got back home so exhausted that I seriously worried if I’d fall asleep if I simply sat down in my chair instead of going straight to bed.

I still sat down in my chair. I had to log onto the Internet and check the news on the election.

Rather fall asleep in my chair and get no real rest than go to bed to suffer night-long nightmares of Sarah Palin standing behind John McCain as he puts his hand on the bible, both smiling as the latter takes the oath and becomes the next president of the Divided States of America.

I couldn’t bear the thought. So I sat down with my heart pounding in my throat, only to be reasonably reassured that things were going to turn out in Obama’s favor. I crawled into bed and slept like the dead within seconds.

Despite this, I woke up over an hour ago…at half past four. For a moment, I thought to turn over…and then the knot in my stomach came back at me with a furious vengeance. The horror came back. The dry throat and the feeling that my feet were going numb. So I got up, rubbing my face and trying to dispell my worst fears as I turned on my computer.

The poll said 48 percent for McCain, 51 for Obama at that time, with 135 electors going the formers way, 220 going to the latter. Not long after, the big news hit the screen.

I drew a sigh of relief.

I think it is time I explain something at last. I don’t agree with Barack Obama on a lot of issues. To me, he’s a right wing politician. The United States is a distinctly right wing country, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer almost as if it is a law of nature that some people should step on others. But I agree with Obama on key issues, such as abortion and gay rights. I also believe that literally ANY Democrat out there is a wiser choice than literally ANY Republican after the last eight years of miserable, incompetent leadership and religious zealotry from the Oval Office.

It is a matter of a change of system, not a change simply of president. The United States, and by extension the entire world, needs the United States to recover lost ground. Recover prestige thrown away in unilateral madness by George W. Bush. We need the United States to be a guardian of international law again. A country which will put its foot down when someone violates international rules and regulations, for the protection of EVERYONE…not just three hundred million Americans…instead of thinking itself right and just in breaking these laws left and right.

Why should America care about the rest of the world? Why can’t three hundred million Americans just care about three hundred million Americans and leave the rest of the world to deal with its own problems?

Simple.

The United States of America is the most powerful military nation in the world. China may be able to put another million men in the field every week for a year, but China lacks the super-technology of the US Army. Consequently, the United States can choose to be the world’s foremost protector of the rule of law…or the world’s foremost lawbreaker. And the rest of us can really only watch and record which of the two choices the United States goes for.

Decency, human compassion, morality and conventional wisdom all dictate that the United States should choose the former of the two options at any time, but during the regime of George W. Bush, the United States has become viewed as little better than an out-of-control hoodlum in parts of the world that used to look up to and admire the great country across the Atlantic.

We WEPT with New York … with all of the United States … when the Twin Towers collapsed. We watched in horror as the suffering of women and children and innocent people in Afghanistan was subsequently laid bare to the world, and even I … ardent anti-militarist and whole-hearted supporter of world-wide detante … clamored for war against the evil, inhumane and degenerate rule of the Taliban. I wanted to see Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar dragged before an international tribunal, dressed in rags, gagged and bleeding, on bare feet and hogtied as painfully as humanly possible.

For a moment, I too forgot Habeas Corpus and the rule of law.

But I am one person. One insignificant, unimportant, powerless person. And I sobered up rather quickly. Yes, I wanted Osama and Omar put on trial, but I’d prefer them to be standing when the sentence was read out to them. I’d prefer them to look their executioners in the eye and understand just how deeply they had lost. Just how utterly they had been defeated by those in the world who stands for right and good. For those who stands for the oppressed, the subjugated and the unjustly persecuted.

I wanted them to know that all they stood for, all they held dear and all they represented had been crushed beyond hope of repair or salvaging.

I wanted them to be standing there, facing the scorn of the world, as defeated, broken men.

And then I wanted them to die.

I still do.

But with George W. Bush in the White House, the War on Terror, the most clear-cut example of Bellum Iustum in modern history, became the president’s personal war on the man his father had neglected to remove from office in Iraq. A war for to secure oil supplies. A war that launched Iraq into a bloody civil war.

A war that can’t be won militarily, because the Iraqis MUST figure out how to solve their problems without the backing (or threat, depending on the point of view) of American M16s.

The troops in Afghanistan are fighting a desperate battle to keep the Taliban at bay, when that region should long since have been flooded in enough troops and materiel to secure it once and for all

I am sitting here, in dire need of a shower and some breakfast, as the news keep ticking in, widening the victory by which Obama has defeated McCain. By which he defeated the Republican He-Man vs. Skeletor thinking. By which he defeated the last eight years of insanity.

And while I always thought I understood what he meant when he spoke of hope, I now realize that it is not until now … when his victory is secure … that I do. Until now, I hoped for his victory, for the sake of the free world.

Now I have hope for the world.