Sunday, January 28, 2007

Mall of Death


Pentagon City is the labyrinth of death. In this mall (Shopping Centre for you Europeans) life is slowly and painfully sucked out of you by the lifeless atmosphere, the fake palm trees and the extremely slow Starbucks staff. I happened to know this because I spent 5 hours dying today, and 4 hours on Friday waiting for the Apple store to cure my ill ibook. Both days I arrived with joy in my steps just to leave with a paler face and slowly dragging feet. For those of you who have never been to Pentagon City it is a collection of stores inside a gigantic brown building only a few metro stops away from my home in Foggy Bottom. There is a food court that serves MacDonald’s, sushi, and Thai food from suspicious little stalls located along one wall. You eat on hard, green metal chairs on big long tables that are very reminiscent of a school canteen. And not in a good way. It has like five floors and everything is painted in a cold, white colour that kind of steals the colour from your face, like it needs it really bad. So you become whitewashed. No one really seems to be enjoying themselves walking around, no happy Sunday shoppers just angry people trying to get up the slow moving escalators. Pentagon City has this affect on people. You become angry for no apparent reason. The Apple store is a bit of a refuge, the white colour in there is warmer. But still. Still you just want to get on that blue metro line, bury yourself in the Washington Post and ride that train until you're in the District again. Far away from that hollow place that manages to make shopping a pain, mesh your brain and eat your will to ever be nice to someone again. Phew Im glad I made it out.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Blog for Choice Day!


Blog for Choice Day - January 22, 2007

Why I am Pro-Choice:
Hi, good day everyone. Today is a little bit special. Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision, which firmly established the US constitutional right to abortion. Today is therefore Blog for Choice day; and today everyone is therefore encouraged to blog about why they are pro choice.
Here is my reason:
I could write this post about how it is time to start treating women as adults who can make their own decisions. How it is time to trust women that they know what is best for their own health and their futures.
I could write about how I am sick of the belittling of women in the anti-choice campaigns, like our views don’t matter, like if we got left with a choice of terminating an abortion we would instantly make the wrong one and regret it.
I could write about how I found it weird that last time I saw an anti-choice demonstration they showed factually incorrect images of foetuses and the crowd consisted of only men.
I could write about how abortion is very rarely a solution a women chooses to use as contraception. How we rather take a pill and/or use a condom to protect ourselves, and how abortion is a lifesaving last option, not something we do out of laziness or because we love it so much. Abortion is a hard choice. But believe it or not, women can make hard choices too, and abortion should be a choice no less.
I could write about the overwhelming evidence of the increase in illegal abortions and their disastrous consequences. I could point out that 80,000 women die each year because of them. Or that the number of abortions does not decrease because you ban them. Or that 288,700 women were hospitalized in Brazil last year following illegal abortions.
I could write about any of those things because they are so important.
But you should know about them already; you should be convinced by them already; you should have heard them before and told other people about them.
I want to blog for choice because I have a slightly different viewpoint than many of those reading this. I come from a country (Sweden) where there no longer is an abortion debate. Where we have realized many of these things; taken them into account; looked at our own values and morals, and our healthcare ideas; and we have come to the democratic conclusion that banning abortion is not right. It is not only unhealthy, deadly, immoral, old-fashioned, and repressive, it is also a breach of a fundamental human right. The right to decide over your own body, should we start restricting the handicapped to have sex? If you restrict one reproductive right then others will follow.
But neither of this is really the point. The point is that the Swedish way works; we have less abortions and less illegal abortions, but more compulsory sex education, an open and honest discussion about sex, and an outlook of sex as health and good. You have to believe Women, and young women are independent and intelligent enough to make informed decision, the school provides, by law, help with these decisions.
This goes for all of Western Europe. For example, in the Netherlands, where teenage sexual activity is about the same as in the U.S., pregnancy rates are only one-ninth those of the United States. Education, education, education, and a little bit of honesty. Banning abortion is not a solution, it breaks my heart to see that people still fighting for it. Few of them has the experience I have been lucky to grow up in, few of them have lived in the most obvious example how reproductive rights are healthy, and must remain a fundamental human right.
For my favourite feminist blogger Jill's, excellent "Why I am Pro-Choice" blog post check here! (Creds to her for the figures in this post).

Friday, January 19, 2007

Age... I dont like it.

I know you are going to say 22 isnt old. And it’s not really. Maybe. But I turn 22 today and I don’t like it. When I was younger I wanted to grow up, wanted to have responsibility, wanted to know more. I still do, but I could stay 21 doing it. I have done a lot in 22 years, lived in some foreign countries, met a lot of strong people, gone to some unforgivable parties. But 22 is just unnecessary. 21 goes better with my hair I think.
I feel like girls are given a bad share in this age thing, we do better when we’re 21 than 22 whilst the guys just get better. My age has caught up with me I need to do something that few 22 years olds have done. I take suggestions. Maybe I should sail across the Atlantic in little a self-made boat whilst finding myself again. Or go live with some rainforest people and find myself again. I feel like I should find myself again. Or just go out in Adams Morgan tonight, maybe I’ll find myself around there somewhere?

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Hibernation


My parents live in a village in Sweden, I grew up here til I was 16 and moved to boarding school in Scotland. The village is called Sjötorp and has around 700 people living in it. Sweden's biggest canal starts here; Sjötorp is its connection to the biggest lake in Sweden, Vänern. It is not famous for much more than that. I think it should be because it is a beautiful place, especially in the summer. However, regardless of the canal it also has a magical effect; the village is able to freeze time.
Well, it doesn’t freeze it as such, but it makes everything go really really slow (maybe much like any small town anywhere in the world I guess). So I have been here for the last week and nothing has happened, I have done nothing, I have spoken to no one, I have written nothing, I have not seen anyone; it is much like a short-term human hibernation. I actually think my heart is beating slower than ever, that is how relaxed I am.
It has been great, I say I haven’t done stuff but I have done something; I've started knitting a scarf, and read loads of books. These activities are a good change from my usual slightly more hedonistic pursuits. Vie read The Perfume, which is a great book describing a travel through France in the 18th century by the sense of smell (its just coming out as a film too). I have now started reading the bible. Yes, a very surprising choice I know, but I wanted to read a classic, you know, find out what all the fuss is about. And wow, you have to look hard to find a more patriarcical book. I am only on like page 20 but there has only been two women of any mention so far (but there has been a hell of a lot of men) and one of them screwed up the whole world because she wanted knowledge (I think we girls really deserve to be held to that for the rest of time), the other one is the wife of Abraham, and she so far she hasn’t said anything she is only so beautiful that the whole of Egypt wants to sleep with her and might kill her husband for it.
I go back to the normal universe on Friday when I first go to Oslo, and then I am back in the US on Monday. Hibernation is great but only short term and it’s going to be great to go back to DC. I’m going to try to maybe get an internship or something. Be a better person. Have more fun. See more than Georgetown. There is a lot to do in my final 5 months there!
Finally got the ibook connected to the internet at my parents house so in a sudden spur of activity I have uploaded the pictorial documentation of my last two weeks. It includes christmas in Oslo, and new years in Copenhagen, and it is all on my flickr, over two pages of it!

New Years Resolution


Pictorial New Years resolutions are not that common. But I have one this year. The picture above is taken sometime around 2.30 on the 1st of January 2007 in Ideal Bar in Copehangen, Denmark. I want it to be model for the next 365 days to come and by this i mean; in 2007 I want to be;
1. Happy
2. Dancing
3. Dressed Up
4. as often as I can With A Beer In My Hand
5. In A Foreign Country
6. With Amazing Friends (not visable on the picture though)
7. Have Orange Nails.

I feel like if I am any of those 7 things within the next year I shall be ok. And If I have all at once as much as possible 2007 might even be as good as 2006 was. happy New Year.