Monday, February 11, 2008

*Sigh* This is good.....ultimately

Three hours each week - my confidence is shaken. I have a class where I'm the only woman and I feel like crap in it, but my resolve is kicking in and soon, I will share more of what has happened in the last two weeks. I've entered another phase of what I have begun to call the time of the caterpillar. Wish me luck.

Monday, October 08, 2007

PostSecret Pain


This came up at PostSecret yesterday (if you haven't seen or heard of PostSecret - is there still room under your rock? I'd like to join you there). I wrote to Frank Warren about this image, but my comment still hasn't appeared. This postcard broke my heart and rather than wait for him to maybe post my message, I'm putting it here. I don't know what the chances are of the woman who wrote that card seeing this blog (since no one reads it anyway), but I can't just let this sit.

Dear Brave Woman,

I'm writing this letter to let you know what a courageous person you are and you are not alone! I wish I could personally offer you a hand and pull you from his dark cloud, but I think you are on your way all by yourself. Congratulations and keep on!

I know what you're feeling in your gut is miserable. He's your lover, partner, friend. You love him and he loves you. He would never really hurt you. At the same time, he's really raping you, regardless of whether he tacks the words "fantasy" or "pretend" to it. In his head, you're just an object. You aren't a beautiful, loving, intelligent person anymore.

You also know exactly where these fantasies come from and he's made you sit and watch those porn flicks with him. Which feels just as much like rape as what he does to you physically. Have you ever given thought to what else goes through his head? Or what images he's not sharing with you? You have every right to hold a mirror up to him and make him see who he is and what he's doing to you. And if you need help, there are resources.

One Angry Girl
Against Pornography
Pornography and Rape
Robert Jensen (various articles esp. good for men)

Precipitive Insomnia

I haven't slept much in the last couple days. I rarely do when I'm home alone. I don't like to miss anything and no matter how tired I feel, I will fight sleep until it kills me. For some reason I am able to let it go when my partner is around.

However, I am very grateful at this moment to be awake. The world outside is still dark and quiet from its own sleep except for a very gentle rain. It smells so good and the cool breeze feels positively silky on my arms. I wish I could curl up in the breeze. Wrap it around myself and bury my nose in it.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

*Smile*


Not the most creative, but I don't care. *I* made it.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Aw 'ell

Ya ever have one of those days where you feel like you really handled something well, but yet you want to a put a new hole in your head over it? Where what you thought was going to be a good thing turned out to be an embarrassing disaster and you know you just have to shake the dust off and move on, but you really don't want to show your face in public ever again.

Yeah.....I had one of *those* days.

Good thing I don't drink anymore....it could've been worse.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

random cuteness

Another one bites the dust

Girl, 13, charged with shooting father to death

  • Girl shot father in the face while he was in bed
  • Home was overrun with animals and filth, police said
  • Neighbor: Girl said she killed father because she "couldn't take it any more"
  • Girl, 13, charged as an adult with criminal homicide; ordered held without bail

BUENA VISTA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A 13-year-old girl used a shotgun to fatally shoot her father in the head early Monday in a home overrun with animals and filth, police said.

The girl told investigators she used a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot 34-year-old Matthew Booth in the face while he was in bed, according to a police affidavit.

A police complaint did not identify a motive in the killing, but her mother, Michelle Fazek, who was separated from Booth, said she had complained several times to county child welfare officials that her daughter and her brother, 14, were living in squalor and that her daughter had been abused.

"I just want to see her," Fazek said. "She must be so scared."

Messages left for Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families were not immediately returned.

The Associated Press does not identify victims of possible sexual abuse.

The girl appeared in municipal court late Monday wearing a maroon county jail uniform, her hands and ankles cuffed, where she was charged as an adult with criminal homicide and ordered held without bail.

The house in Elizabeth Township, about 20 miles southeast of Pittsburgh was in deplorable condition, police said.

"They had a number of animals, dogs, cats and rabbits. They hadn't cleaned up after them," said James Morton, assistant superintendent of Allegheny County Police. The two-story frame house had dirty, peeling white siding, and a downstairs window was boarded up.

Matthew Booth's neighbor Suzanne Gruber told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the girl had told her she had killed her father because she "just couldn't take it any more." Gruber said the girl also told her she had been abused.

In an interview with KDKA-TV, Gruber said the girl said "she messed up the house to make it look like somebody had broken in and she ended up shooting him in the face."

Gloria Brown, who lives two houses down from the Booth house, said the family moved in last year. She said she offered to let the girl, who seemed shy, stay at her home.

"I just know something wasn't right at the house," Brown said. She said she last saw the girl Sunday making a sandwich for her father at a birthday celebration at the Brown house.

"I was totally shocked when it happened," Brown said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Bloody vengeance

'Dark Angel' kills & mutilates her stepdad over sex abuse: probers


Brigitte Harris is the suspect in a brutal slay of Eric Goodridge in her Queens apartment.


She lured her stepfather to a Queens apartment, then handcuffed, asphyxiated and sexually mutilated him - all to settle a horrific score from two decades ago, sources said.

Cops investigating the twisted slaying of Eric Goodridge, 55, believe stepdaughter Brigitte Harris, 26, cut off his penis to exact revenge for alleged sex abuse when she was a girl, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

Harris, who called herself the Original Dark Angel and Lady Vengeance, left chilling notes in her Rockaways apartment accusing Goodridge of abuse and justifying her crime, sources said.

"He wrecked my life," read one note found near her stepfather's body Saturday. "At first, I blamed myself. Now I know it's not my fault," another said.

"She planned this - it was premeditated," a law enforcement source said. "In her mind, it was justified vengeance."

Police recovered a bloody knife and caught up with Harris after she checked herself into a mental hospital and ranted incoherently about the slaying.

Goodridge, an emigrant from the West African nation of Liberia, had arrests for reckless endangerment in 1978 and menacing in 1982, but no details were available.

Harris was born in 1981.

Police said Harris sent e-mails to Goodridge to lure him to her apartment. Then she handcuffed him to a chair, gagged him with duct tape and throttled him until he died, authorities said.

He was already dead when she cut off his penis, officials said, noting there would have been much more blood if he had been alive when it was severed.

"This is a homicide that had meaning and reason," said one source. "It is like a movie, let me tell you."

The cause of death was "homicidal violence, including gagging and neck compression," according to a medical examiner's spokeswoman.

Goodridge lived in Staten Island when he was married to Harris' mom. He later married another woman, who died five years ago.

That woman's mother defended Goodridge yesterday as a decent dad to his other children, who are now orphaned.

She acknowledged hearing rumors that Goodridge had abused Harris - but she didn't think it was true.

"I would die if I could believe that," said his former mother-in-law. "He wouldn't pay child support, but I wouldn't believe that."

But a former brother-in-law said he had also heard of the sex abuse claims long before Goodridge's shocking death.

"It stands to reason if someone pulls a Lorena Bobbitt, there's a good reason," he said.

Harris has twice made criminal complaints against her stepsister Carleen Goodridge, once for grand larceny and once for assault.

Carleen Goodridge said she couldn't talk about the dark family secrets behind the slaying.

"It will all come out," she said outside her home in Staten Island.

The family arranged for a lawyer to represent Harris, but the lawyer told the Daily News he had not spoken with her yet.

The relatives said Goodridge told them he worked for the government of Liberia, but a diplomat at Liberia's Mission to the United Nations said she had never heard of him.

Harris works for a private security company at Kennedy Airport and is not a government airport screener, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said.

With Ernie Naspretto and Bill Egbert

Thursday, July 12, 2007

With every advancement...

I should know by now, that everything progresses with time. Welcome Web 2.0. Welcome YouTube, Myspace, and Facebook. And...YouPorn. Naturally - this was coming. You can't have a technological advancement without it being perverse.

Porn 2.0: What Happens When Free Porn Meets Social Networking