Today is oddly filled with irony

I'll lead with the slightly amusing irony, which was finally discovering my snowboots in the trunk of my car, where they had apparently been since last year. To the average American, this would simply be stupid and annoying. To one who's been up to her elbows in assorted British fandoms for the last several years, it's also hysterically funny.*

The other bit of irony is not at all amusing and mostly a function of the way my brain mashes things together sometimes. I've run across a truly insane amount of homophobic and transphobic idiocy for a single day. There's Pat Robertson's assertion that the recent Nor'Easter was God's way of slowing travel to limit people's ability to do gay things which is bizarre even for him, Phyllis Schlafly being horrified that LGBT people want basic human respect, The AFA freaking out about the military being collectively sodomized by the repeal of DADT, and some nutjob in NC not only calling LGBT people "sexual predators" but revealing that-much like the AFA-he didn't even understand what DADT was in the first place. That's not even all of it, but it's the links I could find and stuff I could remember. Now, unfortunately, none of these things is, on its own, all that unusual. Other than Robertson honing in on a simple and relatively usual winter event rather than waiting for a major catastrophe to blame on someone he doesn't like, individually, each is just the usual BS. But for some reason, it just seemed like a lot in one day.

Then I remembered that today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Basically, a commemoration of a paranoid politician preemptively killing off an entire generation of his subjects because he was afraid one of them would dethrone him. (Way to go about ensuring somebody's going to try to dethrone you!) And there's the irony, because that's exactly the same motivation. Fear. Absolutely out-of-control fear that doesn't care who gets hurt in the process so long as the fear is calmed, generally by removing the objects of one's fear, if not literally (though, make no mistake, that can be the outcome, either directly or indirectly) then at least by making the ones who are feared have to hide. Equally ironic if possibly overly optimistic on my part is the idea that by doing so, they just make it ever clearer why they need not to be in positions of influence.

*For anyone who didn't get the "boots in the trunk" thing, in the UK, they call the trunk of a car a boot. I didn't say it was intellectual humor, just struck my funnybone. Probably only mildly funny to anyone else who got it and not at all funny to those who didn't.

ETA: Thanks to bethbethbeth for letting me know that the Borowitz report, source of the Robertson quote, is satire like the Colbert Report or the Onion. *facepalm* Though it's a sign of how insane the things he says generally are that it was so damned believable.

Apparently I'm not the only one who can't recognize satire

This, however, I thought was rather obvious.

Clearly not. Queerty didn't seem to know what to make of it, but then again, I'm often unsure what to make of Queerty. Some of the absurd commenters at this blog ran with it into total biphobic territory. The comments at the original vid site on YouTube are a mix of people who get it, people who are offended because they took it seriously, and people who ran with the stereotypes.

It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which the "greedy" and/or "insatiable" claims come up.

Not all bisexuals are poly, and not all poly-folk are bisexual. Heterosexual people who commit to being monogamous do not cease to be attracted to other people of the opposite gender, they just enter into an agreement not to act on it. Homosexual people who commit to being monogamous do not cease to be attracted to other people of the same gender, they just enter into an agreement not to act on it. Bisexual people who commit to being monogamous do not cease to be attracted to other people of both/all genders, they just enter into an agreement not to act on it. People of all orientations both succeed and fail at monogamy, polyamory, celibacy, and whatever other sexual and romantic arrangements may exist. Why is this brain surgery?

Despite my failure to recognize the Pat Robertson thing earlier as satire, I actually really like the use of satire to show the absurdity of things, especially stereotypical and prejudicial assumptions. Just like Dementors in HP, the Fear Demon on Buffy, and any number of other heavy-handed metaphors, some things are best beaten with a good dose of laughter at just how Riddikulus they are.

At last: the post I was actually planning to make today!

Sorry for the spammage. It seems to be feast or famine on this journal lately.

I'd meant to start last week but never got my act together. This week, I'm back to tutoring, so I finally made my way into the gym and used the treadmill. I'd intended to go for an hour, but I messed up the controls, ended up splitting my walk in half as a result, so I got about 45 minutes, which still isn't bad for a first go. Now that I know the machine a bit better, I'll (hopefully) use it correctly and have actual data. Data is good. I like numbers that show progress. I like non-weight-related numbers even better, because my goal really is to get my stamina and strength built back up. While my hips, knees, and ankles would no doubt benefit from carrying less of me around, that's not the primary goal.

One important number I do have is 153. That's the highest my heart rate got, and I slowed the machine back down once it got there. High 140s is fine. 150s is getting up there. Of course, having pre-medicated my asthma, my heart rate was already almost 110 when I first got on the damned thing, but that's to be expected. At least I only get tachy and not wonky with the albuterol these days. Oh, and the heart rate stayed in the 140s at 3 miles per hour but overshot once I took it up to 3.5.

I'm not sure I have a solid goal here. Ultimately, I'd like to walk up a couple of flights of stairs without getting winded and maybe even survive a bellydance class or fifty. For a short-term goal, mostly I want to increase the maximum speed I can tolerate and add at least a little incline by the end of the winter break. I'm also thinking I may alternate days between the treadmill and the recumbent bike that has the neat electronic race-course-looking thingy. For this week, it's all treadmill though. Walking is a good starting point. No strength training yet, alas, because the shoulder's still effed-up. Not sure if it's the way I'm sleeping on it or what, but something's continuing to aggravate it so that it's not getting better as it should.