We're in serious concern mode here over the impending disaster in Jamaica. Brendon's closest friend's mom and one of her sons are right on the beach in Negril, with the eye headed for them. As I feared, they are not leaving or going to a shelter. The house itself is old enough to have gone through many storms, but being on the coast, it could well end up underwater. It doesn't surprise me that they are being stubborn, but I really wish the family could have talked them into leaving.

A huge percentage of the homes in Jamaica won't withstand this storm. Too many live in lean-tos made from scrap materials. I really hope people have gone to shelters. This is just horrifying.

eta: I haven't been to their home, but Brendon has and says it is about 20' above sea level because there is a sharp incline going down to the ocean. Still, completely insane to stay when they had other options.

This is just horrifying.

Yes. I don't have better words to describe it.

Yikes, that is scary, Laura.

I am at my sister’s house and managed to leave behind the cable I needed for my second screen. I tried several of hers and they did not work, so I’m not sure if it’s a cable issue or the screen has somehow died. But I can’t work just from my laptop I’ll go nuts, so we hauled out/unpacked my brother in laws GIANT MONITOR which is a 34” wide screen. I think I can see pivot tables into the FUTURE on this thing it’s so big.

Very worried about Jamaica, that storm looks terrifying

It really does. Safety ~ma to, well, everyone there.

I trudged forth into the Monday morning and did my Pilates.

After a rainy weekend, it's another gloriously sunny October day in SF.

There's a long, detailed, exceptionally well done article in the NYTimes today about sex trafficking in Los Angeles, and it's so fucking heartbreaking.

These are very young girls, 13-15, more than half of whom were in the Foster care system. Pimps literally park outside halfway houses and grab them as they come out.

They get taken out of Florida, Texas, everywhere and they're brought to LA and there's a five block stretch on Figueroa where the cars just slowly cruise through like they're picking up an order at In N Out.

The girls are tortured, killed, forced to do half a dozen customers a night, and the pimps make $12,000 a night on their stables. And these girls are loyal and devoted to their pimps because they have nobody. They get taken off the streets but they just return.

The whole thing is horrific and I get queasy and outraged thinking about the lines of customers.

But I also think birth control and abortion would prevent a lot of unwanted children from being born. There are no Pro-Life evangelists out trying to help these girls.

Sorry, for the heavy thoughts on Monday. But I didn't really grasp how entrenched and broadly reaching it is the States.

I used to watch Cops sometimes, but I stopped because it showed so many women/girls who were clearly sick or in withdrawal, coughing and shaking or whatever, and just this line of disgusting dudes, wanting their two minutes.(I've got urges, too, a great many of which go unsatisfied, so in one sense, if people wanted to hang out at the Chicken Ranch, you know, I'd kind of get it. )Not to open up that kind of debate or imply that my disability means nobody'd touch me till the debit went through or anything like that...just saying, in one sense it would be good for some people to have a place to go. But I hope I'd never have the kind of urges that would make that seem okay.

I didn't mean to kill the thread with the abiding horrors of the kyriarchy.

in one sense it would be good for some people to have a place to go.

In Japan there's a legal form of prostitution where men go into a place, lie down on a table and a woman gives them a handjob. The end. No beatings. No STDs. No pimps.

I don't know if I'm really advocating for that, but there does seem to be a direct relationship between the puritanical need to deny sexuality and the inevitable outcome being illegal, abusive, exploitive sex.

In the Netherlands they accept that people want sex, they teach sex ed at an early age, abortions are legal and affordable and they have very low teen pregnancy rates.

Oh, babe, you know I could go darker, right?(Not taking that as a challenge right now, but it really does amuse me to break up little games like" Who Would You Be In 1908?" by saying "Possibly dead, next to my dead mom." and some days not adding "bled-out" too seems like a favor to the kids. But for some of us, as much as I'd love to say "Shikse Emma Goldman", I know what I know. But if I could blow up Theme Park History at the same time, at least something worthwhile would have come from it.) I'm on Team Netherlands, I think.

Timelies all!

Visit with Mr. S on Saturday went well.

I took today off and had a massage. It was good, if a little hard on parts of my shoulders. Of course I'm stressed again, because life.