I'd LIKE to think that our various elected congress folk are intelligent and savvy enough to consider all the possible ramifications of their shiny new taxes to try and fix the budget, but I seriously, honestly, truly doubt they have.

People dismiss smoking as being "chosen", and yes, in, say, the majority of people? It probably is. Hell, I myself will own up to choosing it, and I have no right to complain on the smoking tax insofar as I personally go. And honestly? I don't necessarily mind the tax, except for a few glaring problems.

So, here are some numbers for you, as dug up by me.

According to CNN and PubMed (though, to be fair, CNN references the PubMed study), the mentally ill make up nearly 45% of the total cigarette market in the United States.

When you break it down by disease, the numbers get a little bit sketchier simply because that some of the studies that are quoted in various websites are arguably out-of-date.

The website with the most sobering percentages listed for smoking and mental illness is Bipolar World. Broken down by mental illness, their numbers are:

Mental Illness	Percentage who smoke
Bipolar	70%
Major Depression	60%
Schizophrenia	90%
Panic Disorder	56%
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder	60%

To compare this against the entire population of adults? According to the World Health Organization, only about 23% of American adults smoke cigarettes.

Other sources that cite statistics include here, and here.
The mentally ill are already a disenfranchised bunch, and to slap on such a tax burden and the proceeds of the taxes collected aren't even funding health care for the mentally ill? And don't you DARE tell me "But it's for the children!" You really shouldn't be funding such a vital program as SCHIP with a tax whose income will fluctuate based on how many cigarettes were bought. Fund that shit with taxes from property or the like.

I mean, seriously, few things have me at a loss for words, but this one almost does it.

        

Am I really racist? I don't know, I probably qualify a little bit as racist as I've outlined here in my first entry. I'm deeply ashamed of my racism and I want to un-learn it. I'm still working on it. Will I ever succeed? I don't know. I may not. I share my story about that not to promote racism, but to try and show at least one of the ways in which it can develop and why it is so important to fight it on multiple levels (not just on the end of the "racist" person, but also on the part of EVERYBODY on the planet to work towards squashing behaviors that promote racism and sexism and any other kind of "ism" out there! As an example to further that train of thought, if you see me being racist, especially if you know I'm trying to unlearn it, it's your job to help me by saying, "hey, did you realize you were being racist there?"). My racism stems from the sexism I've received from the men of that particular ethnicity. It isn't fair of me to paint all men of that ethnicity with that brush, which is why I want to "deprogram" the racism from myself.

What do I want to be? Well, I don't rightly know with certainty, but I have a vague idea. I am a feminist, but more than that, I want to make a difference in the feminist movement. I want my generation to be the last to experience sexism. It's likely too late, but one can dream. I also want to help eradicate racism (most especially my own). The nice thing about feminism is that it is a civil rights movement, and thus, it's very open to progressing the civil rights of everyone, not just women. I also want to fight the stigma associated with mental illness, but I've already babbled about that quite a bit. Feminism is "new" to me, thus shiny. It's new because I used to be afraid to define myself as a feminist until one of my best girl friends showed me that feminism isn't necessarily promoting women's rights at the cost of rights to others, but its all about equal rights for everyone. And as a feminist, I could never advocate McCain/Palin.

My next post (if I ever make it) will detail all the reasons why I think Palin would set feminism back a few DECADES if given opportunity. It's great she's done so well for herself, it really is, but she is bad for feminism. 

        

A couple of days ago I was on the train, going back to work after getting lunch. Per my usual routine, I had my little Blackberry out and was reading the news. Almost as soon as I sat down, a man got up and stood by my seat. He looked at the phone in my hand briefly and asked me if he could have my phone number. I look up from my news article and say, politely, "No." Alas, that wasn't the end of it. He asks a second time, same question, so I just assume he didn't hear me, and I repeat my "No."

Undeterred, this strange fellow compliments me on my tattoo. I tell him, "Thank you, but I don't speak English well," in a fake accent. (I'm a white girl, if the absurdity of doing that is lost on you.) Unfortunately I didn't think that one too far ahead, and I managed to invite more questions from him by making that statement. He asks me where I'm from, and I lie and tell him Germany. He starts going on about how he has a friend who's either from Germany or lives in Germany, I forget which (not to mention I really could care less). I repeat, "Sorry, don't speak English well."

Alas, this freak isn't quite ready to give up. When the train gets to my stop, I get up to get off, and to my horror, he follows me. A number of scenarios ran through my head at this point: I could get back on the train and get off at the next stop (a huge inconvenience to me), I could call my boss and have him send someone to pick me up from the station to prevent this dickwad from following me to work, or I could try and find a way to get rid of him before I began walking back to work. I decided not to get back on the train, which left me with either
"Call my boss" or "Get rid of the creep."

He starts asking me various questions about where I'm going, where I work. I continue my whole, "Sorry, I don't speak English," spiel. Finally he asks outright for me to be his girlfriend, whereupon I told him I was married.

Married was apparently the magic word, as he apologized and scurried off shortly after I uttered it.

Looking back, I made a number of mistakes. After he asked for my phone number, I did the right thing by saying no. I went wrong with the whole pretending not to speak English bit, I should have instead said,  "Leave me alone, I don't want to talk to you." If it escalated beyond that? "Leave me alone or I'll call the cops on you." Alas, hindsight.

And to deviate slightly from the topic: Later, when I was reciting the events to my partner, I mentioned to him that I wished I was anything but white, to make my "No speak English" line that much more believable. Or it would have been incredibly funny (or so I thought), if I wasn't white, and told him in a flawless American accent, "So sorry, I don't speak English," a la Maggie Q from Balls of Fury. My partner replied that such a situation was when I wanted most to be white.

I didn't get it, and frankly, I still don't. One of my girlfriends who was trying to explain it to me showed me this link about an Asian woman's very negative experience on Southwest Airlines. After reading it, I very much get the sexism, it's blatent as the nose on my face, but I very much fail to see how their behaviors were racist. The sort of behavior she describes I have witnessed happen to white women (and have no doubt that I risk experiencing myself if I happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time).

        

If you want a giggle, you can read the Fark.com thread about this article. Or you can just read the article directly.

Arizona just banned smoking for mental health patients in the hospital. It strikes me as a bad idea in general, if only because I'm both a mental health patient and a smoker, and there have been times that smoking has been one of the few things to keep me from ripping someone's head off. Nicotine is a stimulant, but in my anecdotal experience of the stuff, it acts to calm you down (much like Ritalin will calm a kid with ADD or ADHD or the like—it SOUNDS counterintuitive but it isn't). It acts on the neurotransmitters that antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs act on, which is why Cymbalta doesn't work as well if you're a smoker, or why Wellbutrin kills your craving for cigarettes.

Now, that being said, I personally have never been hospitalized in a hospital that allows smoking. Now granted, I only have two hospitals to compare against, but one was in Tennessee and the other was in California, and if smoking was going to be allowed, one would think the Tennessee hospital would have allowed it. You either didn't smoke at all or you were given nicotine patches or nicotine gum. So in a roundabout way, it's probably absurd for me to rant against this.

Which is why I won't. But whoa, I'm genuinely surprised to hear of a hospital that allowed smoking to begin with.

        

One thing I used to hate about therapy was the whole victim mentality some therapists would promote. I suffer FROM depression and borderline personality disorder, I'm not a victim OF it.

I was only eleven when I had my first mental hospital stay. I still remember some of the group meetings I would have with them. We had to give our name and our reason for being in the hospital. To say, "Hi, I'm Rory, and I'm here because I tried to kill myself," or "I'm here because I have depression," wasn't acceptable. I had to blame someone for my woes.

Even today it boggles me. Is mental illness that stigmatized that we have to blame someone else for our disease? It seems absurd to me. And in a roundabout way, it is disrespectful to the folk who actually HAVE been victims of abuse of any sort.

So the therapist and I would back-and-forth about this. "Why did you try to kill yourself?" she would ask.

"Because I have depression," would be my reply. She didn't like that. She would keep fishing for it. It took a few days of it, but finally she got me to admit I had a dysfunctional family, a physically, verbally and emotionally abusive sibling, and a passive-aggressive and emotionally abusive mother.

Except I don't consider my mother abusive. She had a tendency to be mean as hell, but she wasn't abusive. I knew what abuse was, I've seen it with other people and received it from my brother. And moreover, she went out of her way to protect me from my brother. Really, in spite of her mistakes, she was a goddamn hero for what she did for me. She can't be blamed for my depression, she didn't know I would get it. I mean, really, would you blame the parent for having an autistic child? Or a child with epilepsy?

And my brother? He was rarely around, because my parents made efforts to protect me from him. He was sick with his own problems, so he was in some sort of treatment at any given time, away from us. So in spite of his abuse, he wasn't around with great enough frequency to be at fault for my depression and emotional issues.

But that wasn't good enough for the therapist. It wasn't possible for me to be depressed just because I was depressed. It had to be blamed on someone. I suppose if I felt particularly like being a wiseass, I could have told her to blame God for allowing me to be born with faulty wiring in my brain. But, being a little eleven year old atheist, that notion just didn't occur to me at the time.

        

When I first started this blog, I wanted to poke fun at mommybloggers and other assholes who treat the internet like a great big high school and bully anyone who dares to post criticism about them. Unfortunately, that requires (to some degree) for me to actually READ their bullshit, and it is mind-numbly dull. I'll pass.

I could blog about strangers I run across in real life who happen to be a waste of space, but to be honest, the majority of people I encounter casually are so bland they rarely merit remembering, let alone blogging about. Few people are assholes on a regular or consistent basis, and most people behave politely most of the time.

Part of the reason I started this blog is to help improve my writing skills. I was considering writing a memoir (despite my life being deathly boring now, I do have a slightly interesting past), and, well, as past entries show, I'm prone to rambling a bit. I get off topic and go on tangents. I wanted to write the memoir because I wanted to make mental illness easier for those without it to understand it. I wanted to make depression and the like accessible to the ordinary healthy person who doesn't quite get it (but wants desperately to understand it).

The reality is I'll probably never write that memoir.

So I've been thinking that perhaps I should turn this blog into my online memoir. If I manage to help even one person understand mental illness, then my blog will have been successful, even if it only ever had one reader.

I intend to remain anonymous, however. I'll also likely change dates and ages and relationships and perhaps even genders of people as I retell various stories to protect their identities. It's none of your business who they are, after all, and it certainly isn't my business to be telling the world about them. And the stories should be told, to help bridge understanding and knowledge, and fictionalizing the characters of the stories won't make the stories any less real.

        

Reccomended reading:
Legalized Prostitution: Regulating the Oldest Profession
Washington Post debate on Legalized Prostitution

I was a prostitute for about a year and a half, perhaps two years. I started when I was nineteen. My memory is shit so I can't give exact dates or times very well. My interest in prostitution started with an interest in alternative sexuality, such as BDSM and dominate/submissive relationships. This curiosity lead me to pornography, and I got the notion I wanted to be a porn star.

My partner at the time made no effort to discourage me, and by means of Craigslist, I found someone claiming to be a photographer who'd pay me a bit of cash for a photoshoot. I travelled all the way from the South Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area up to Petaluma in the North Bay, which is quite an impressive trek to take by public transit alone--it was an all day trip, to be sure.

I won't go so far as to say he raped me. He definitely took advantage, and I was young and stupid, so I was likely easy prey. And shame on him for that. But I never said no, and I actively put myself into that situation--it was my fault for letting him go beyond my boundaries. But my experience with this asshole made it clear to me that I needed an agent or partner of some sort to help protect me from the unscrupulous.

So, back to Craigslist I go! And I hook up with a gentleman who ran a modelling agency. I did a few modelling related gigs in addition to pornography-sort stuff, then he got the notion that to make cash on the side I could hook. I paid him 20% of my fee from clients (also known as "Johns" or "Tricks"), and he drove me around and scheduled appointments for me. He was a great guy, don't mistake him for a pimp. At best he was a manager. He never hit me, never introduced me to drugs, and truth be told, the whole prostitution business wasn't his gig--he wasn't very bright when it came to this whole thing. I figured out the ins-and-outs of the "business" fairly quickly on my own, and I told him we were going to part ways financially when it comes to prostitution, but if he still needed me for any sort of modelling work or similar, I'd be happy to help out. He was quite happy with my decision, as he was becoming aware of his shortcomings when it comes to managing a prostitution business, he preferred to stick to genuine modelling gigs.

I worked "solo". I made friends with other prostitutes, and due to our lack of affiliation with a brothel, pimp, or massage parlour, we would be called "independents" by the clientele base. I had a disposable phone, and I set up a system to "screen" clients to make sure I wasn't going to get busted by a police officer. I have no illusions, however, about any sort of untouchability--if the police REALLY wanted to bust me, they probably could have. But I flew under the radar, and I wasn't involved with any pimps, nor any underage girls, or illegal immigrants, or drugs.

As I've said, I was never involved in drugs. I don't have ANY sexually transmitted diseases (and I've been tested multiple times even since "quitting" the world's oldest profession). I've never been assaulted by a client, nor have I ever been assaulted by a pimp or another girl. I've been scammed, yes, but the loss was merely a loss of money--I chalked that boy up to a learning experience. I've also been stalked--I can only assume it was a disgruntled client, or perhaps some person I pissed off for being successful at this, or even a jealous girl. Nonetheless, I've come out wiser for the experience, and I do not regret having been a prostitute--in fact, if I had the chance, I'd do it all over again and not change anything.

It disgusts me that prostitution is illegal, even today. It's absurd and it only hurts the "victims" of the profession--the people forced to hook because their pimp will kill them if they don't, or the illegal immigrants whose only source of income is prostitution, since their "manager" prevents them from becoming a legal citizen so they can work a legal job. Or the children who are forced into this. And it prevents those of us who are doing this by choice from helping these people we encounter, for fear of being exposed ourselves.

        

        

Is there such a thing as a polite smoker? I'd like to hope so. I'm a smoker, and I make efforts to stay out of the air of non-smokers. I won't smoke if I see a "No smoking" sign (such as on a train platform), though I can't say the same for my fellow smokers who I've seen happily puffing away with the sign right above their head. They're almost always oblivious to (or perhaps intentionally ignoring?) the glares of others as they suck the cancer-causing smoke in and promptly blow it out in the vicinity of others. Its smokers like that who give cause to non-smokers to hate the lot of us.

I don't smoke in my home. I don't want to have all my personal possessions smelling of tar and ash, its bad enough that I stink of it. I don't need my clothes or furniture saturated with it either. I won't smoke in your home, either, even if you're an indoor smoker. I just won't.

I also don't throw my cigarette butts on the ground willy nilly. They're not entirely sanitary--after all, would you want to pick up a used kleenax or even a used fork off the ground after someone else? They're also not breadcrumbs to mark my path. I won't get lost between walking to the train station to my destination if there isn't a trail of cigarette butts to mark my way. I don't know how biodegradable they are (or aren't), but if the visual evidence is any indication, it takes a bit of time for them to break down. Plus, how good can it possibly be for a small animal or a child to eat a filter saturated with nicotine, tar, and other poisons? So I carry my butts with me until I can dispose of them in a wastebin. I will sooner put the cigarette butt in my POCKET than throw it on the ground. I also make it a point to make sure the cigarette is out completely, since I'd feel bad if I saw a blurb in the police blotter of the paper entitled, "Trash can fire Downtown".

I wish I could say I have impeccable smoking manners, but in reality, I don't. In my backyard is a small mountain of cigarette butts on my back porch that I only collect and throw away once or twice a month. I've also had my upstairs neighbor comment on it once when she was shooting the breeze. She said that she thought it was awesome I didn't smoke inside my apartment (thereby exposing my cat and her, through the vents of the wall heater) to cigarette smoke. She did make a comment indicating she had to shut the windows that overlook our backyard to keep the smoke from getting into her house. Mortified, I asked if she'd prefer it that I limit my smoking to the driveway of our apartments (away from the windows) to keep from disturbing her. She reassured me it was my privilege to smoke in my backyard, but I always feel a twinge of guilt when I light up, especially if I see her window open when I look up to check. But I still smoke in my backyard (though lately, away from the side of the building) and she hasn't said anything since, so maybe it doesn't bother her as badly as I worry.

Which brings me back to my question... Is there really such a thing as a polite smoker, or am I fooling myself so I can sleep soundly at night?

I do eventually plan to quit, but in order to successfully quit, one has to seriously want to stop smoking. Deep down in my heart of hearts, I'm just not ready to make that commitment.

Of course, there's always the Smoking Jacket for the Polite Smoker.

        

I grew up taught NOT to be racist, so don't blame my folks or family. My best friends in childhood included a hispanic girl and a black girl. I've dated more Asians and Hispanics than I have white men, for no particular reason other than they either asked me out before a white boy did or it just simply happened that way. My grandparents were a touch racist (some moreso than others) and I used to look down my little nose at them.

I don't anymore.

You'd think if someone learned racism, they would be taught it by their parents, or otherwise develop it from sheer ignorance. Me? I learned racism from negative experiences.

When I first moved to sunny, liberal California I was a clueless 18 year old college dropout. I was stupid and naïve, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was a bit of a snob. But I tried to be polite to everyone because that's how I was brought up. You smile at people, sometimes you shake their hand, you say please, thank you, sir, and ma'am.

My first job in California was at a Great Big Computer Store (like Best Buy or CompUSA). I'm a bit of a computer geek and it seemed appropriate. The pay floored me ($8.50 for a minimum wage level job? Get out of here!) and it was just a fun, if pointless and mildly boring job. I was good enough at it because I knew random things about computers.

They put me in the main computer department doing stock and general customer help. There were comissioned salesmen there alongside me, some of whom could apparently sell snow to an eskimo but didn't really know jack nor shit about computers.

Most of the people there were nice to me, except for one specific group: Indian men. On my first day, I had a customer ask me if I knew where a specific item was. I cheerfully explained it was my first day and told him I didn't know, but I'd find out for him quick as a flash. The first coworker I came across was an Indian male. He scoffed at me. The next nearby coworker, also Indian, was just as rude. Frusterated, I found another coworker (Vietnamese American, if you care), and told him I needed to find something for a customer and the other two guys were painfully. useless in helping me. He explained it was because they were comissioned salesmen and assholes to boot, and then helped me find the item for the customer.

Of course, I later learned the fellow who helped me was also a comissioned salesman, so that didn't have much to do with it. Except perhaps to show that if what you're asking about can get them comission on a sale, they'd help you, otherwise you're shit up the creek because they're assholes.

I would walk to work from my apartment daily, because I didn't have a car (and I still don't). On my way there, I passed several tech companies (ah, the joys of Silicon Valley) who inevitably imported a few programmers from India. At least twice, while walking to work, I'd be joined by an Indian man who was flirting with and hitting on me. As I said, I was 18 at the time and naive--I thought perhaps I was that good looking to get their attention (or perhaps that young?). Even though their advances made me uncomfortable, it never occurred to me at the time that they saw me as a walking green card or quick ticket to US citizenship.

I would also get hit on by the Indian customers at work too. Again, the reality of the situation is they saw a young white girl who wasn't hideous (but perhaps not gorgeous or pretty), that might be impressed by their big paychecks and be a suitably quick ticket to US citizenship. Or at the very least, an easy lay (after all, American women are whores!). I even had one Indian customer PROPOSE to me when I was explaining the differences of video cards to him. Was it the fact that I had a vagina and knew computers? Was it because I was cute? Or was it because his visa was gonna expire and he needed a quick way to stay in the country? Or was it some twisted way to give a compliment? I may never know. I do know after that incident I started hunting for a cubic zirconia ring to wear on my left hand to pretend I was already married.

Ironically enough, I wasn't (yet) racist after my stint at Great Big Computer Store. Oh no. It was a year later, long after I had quit working there. I was out and about, walking from a nearby restaurant back to my apartment. An Indian man (anywhere between 30 and 40) was at the corner, waiting for the crosswalk. I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. He asked for one, and since I was pretty sure he wasn't a minor, I obliged. Brief smalltalk, and I noticed he was following me. Went first to a cafe (he insisted on buying my orange juice) then to the grocery to kill time since I didn't want to lead him to my apartment. He disappeared for awhile (to my relief) so I took my items to the checkout. Lo and behold, he shows up again with a bottle of wine in hand. I tried to explain to him that it was illegal for a 19 year old to drink in the United States. I don't think he cared, as he bought it for me anyway.

Now, keep in mind, I'm 19. For all my supposed intellect, I was as dumb as a box of rocks. Now that I had food in hand I had to go home and put it away. Fuck. So he followed me home. I manage to get him to go away (I forget what I said or did) after he found out where I lived (I DID tell you I was stupid and 19, right?).

A few days later, my doorbell is ringing maniacially. I just KNOW it's him, and a sly peek out the peephole confirms it. When I don't answer after awhile, he gives up and leaves. Later I go out and discover this asshole had left something on my mat: a fifty dollar bottle of perfume. And to make matters worse, I lived alone.

Nothing is quite so creepy as getting unwanted attention from an Indian man while dropping hints that you want him to fuck off and die. Perhaps I was too subtle. Or too nice. My mother always taught me to have manners, and I've noticed most Californian white girls, while rarely outright rude, tend to be pretty cold to people they want nothing to do with.

That incident started my feelings of racism towards Indian men. The behavior I've been subsequently exposed to while living in California really cemented it. To ice the cake, most Indian men are mysogynist assholes!

So yeah, I'm racist. Its something I picked up as a fully grown adult, I wasn't taught it by my parents. I was taught it due to the sexism I received from these assholes. And the fucking creepy behavior they exhibit. I'm not proud of it, in fact, I'm ashamed to admit my racism. If you knew me in person and asked me about it, I'd likely vehemently lie about it, I'm so ashamed of it. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't.

Education isn't the only key to stopping racism and/or sexism in its tracks. Parents aren't the only key to stopping it. We need to stop it ourselves by changing our behaviors. If every woman a person met was a backstabbing, lying, whiny bitch, soon that person might come to despise ALL women. If every driver who cut you off on the road was Asian, you might start saying Asian drivers suck.

The moral of the story? Every time you interact with another human being, you are representing your race, gender, nationality, subculture, hell, even your place of employment! Want to stop racism? Don't perpetuate racial stereotypes in your behavior. Want to stop sexism? Same! It isn't that hard, people! But with the way we (as a species) behave, it's no wonder that racism and sexism still exist today. People beat their breast about how they're discriminated against. Women cry out for equal pay for equal work (yet in reality, many women want equal pay but special treatment). Until we bring ALL our behaviors and attitude in line, racism and sexism will always exist.