I'm Baaaack!

Ouf! What a week-or-so this has been. My mother has finally been operated and is now back home, minus a gall bladder. She's still physically very weak, but still manages to drive everybody around her up the walls.

I had to miss many days at work to take care of my mother, so by the time I got back to the office, things have been piling up my desk and I had to go to a lot of catch up training sessions, because we happen to be implementing a new document control system and I'm among the few staff members who haven't been trained yet. I'm so tired I just go straight to bed after work, then wake up around midnight or so, and start to look in the fridge for things to eat.

Last week I also had a funny (cuckoo, not haha) experience on the web. I was devastated by Kerry's defeat, and I spent all my spare time reading other bloggers' reactions and opinions about the election. On one blog, somebody was saying that in order to attract the Republicans to their side, the Democrats have to be nice and compromise more instead of calling them names. I decided to post in reply that, since Bush's supporters are religious fundamentalists, there is no point in appeasing them. On the contrary, the Democrats should boldy express their anger and their frustration (they should grow some balls, I wrote). Otherwise, I warned, their opponents will consider them as girlie men (à la Ahnold) who deserve to be butt-raped. Apparently, I struck a nerve. Another blogger struck back, calling me a mysoginistic Canadian (she took the time to check) asshole, because she is tired of people like me using language that denotes strength and domination as typically male -- WTF ??????? When I point out that she's attacking me for my choice of words and has not addressed any of my points, the owner of the blog decided to join the fray and berated me for not discussing the issue of sexist language with the proper amount of respect. I foolishly tried to argue that I was discussing a political issue and not a sexist language problem, and of course it was a mistake, because this time, I was accused of being whiny and defensive, on top of being sexist and rude. You all probably have experienced this type of situation: you walk into a bar and try to have a conversation with another patron when suddenly, some crazy guy at the pool table runs at you and hits you with the queue. When you fight back, the bar tender and his crew gang up on you and start pounding you. What you didn't know was that the guy at the pool table is the bar owner's little brother who's not quite right in the head and likes to attack customers whenever he goes through his "dark" periods. Now in such a situation, the smartest move would be to walk out of the bar and make sure to remember never to go back there again. Which is what I did. But goddam it, there was a time when being a feminist meant fighting against language that is demeaning to women, and not censoring language that is "flattering" to men!