Not call myself Codename? What other name would suit me?

(The title is taken from my favorite Rankin/Bass special, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.)

February 18, 2005, I was uploading the last of my newest website Moon Sisters to my old AOL Hometown account. But I had a small issue. What will be my pen name?

Back then, if you ran a Sailormoon page, the trend was that you would make up a picture of yourself, post it to the front or about pages, and have a nickname. It was also a trend to make up your own Sailor Senshi and back story. It's simple, harmless goofing off that really doesn't mean anything.

For years, I had the pen name "Sailor Earth" but there are over 104,224 other Sailor Earths in the world, and I was sick of the hate mail from this one 600 lbs. male, who complained that his skirt was prettier than mine. (It was the same. But with glitter. He's in prison now.)

Well I had already made this .gif image, and I didn't feel up to making a new one. So I thought, what can I do for a pen name, at least temporarily?

While uploading the site, I did a Google search so I could find more links for the link page. And that's when it hit me.

Sailormoon is actually a spin-off from the series Codename Sailor V, a series that follows Sailor Venus one year before she meets the rest of the cast. At the time, the books were not in English, but I told myself every day that one day, I'd read the whole series. (I now have multiple copies.) I just couldn't get over how cool she looks with those glasses.

And that's when it hit me. Codename!! I'll just add that to my pen-name. Nobody else in the whole world has it, so now it's mine.

I had a year of hate emails and people trying to rip from my page, but after that quelled, I had peace. I even befriended other "Sailor Earths" online, and for a while, some of us would joke in the role play forums that we were like the Green Lanterns of Sailor Senshi. Harmless fun.

But then in 2008, I noticed that YouTube was hyper taking down every third video I posted. At first I thought "Copyright BS" until I noticed that the names didn't add up. There were people posing as Warner employees, trying to take videos that have NO Warner Brothers content in them, at all!

Then in 2011, I was hyper trolled. I had all kinds of total strangers stalking me, harassing me, going after my family, posting hate about me, hacking me, every day was a nightmare, and I really didn't want to keep living. What the hell was going on?

But there's no better way to piss people off than to keep living and posting. So I did.

I also started a few other YouTube channels under different titles.

... And then something weird happened.

But the other channels *knock on wood* seem to be doing alright. Even the channel for my Sailormoon page is getting warm, positive comments. The channel with my actual name on it hardly gets any attention, but when it does, it's positive.

Everyone knows it's me on all of them, I don't hide that I own them, but only my Codename Sailor Earth channels have these wackos piling out from the woodwork. The rest are doing alright.

Every YouTube channel I've had under the "Codename Sailor Earth" moniker has had problems with trolling and people trying to put fake claims on MY videos. 

NONE of these freaks are Sailormoon fans, mind you. Most aren't even anime fans anymore. Not once do I see more than two Sailormoon fans going ape shit over it.

They're all ages 18-35, and feel the need to harass me and go nuts. Most of them aren't even into the things I like/post about. But they're quick to tell me all the ways they want to "expose" me and how they would want me to die. Not one of them are kids these days, it's split 60/40 men vs. women and most of them have been to college. The ones not harassing me are trying to take credit for videos I've made myself.

I've seen other people take on the "Sailor Earth" name with zero trolling. So what is it about the word "Codename" that sets people off?

RIP Charles DeHitler Cat... or run for your life, whichever.

The lawyer called today. My folks go in for another hearing on both the house and their divorce next week. The call could not have come at a better time, in fact I'm thinking of sending the whole office a lovely holiday card this year. That's how happy I was to hear the phrase "to talk about the divorce".

Mama is happy. She is 99.99% divorced and is re-reading The Secret.

My dad is... well I can guess he's happy. He seems to be laughing. A whole lot. About his girlfriend, Maryse.

Oh wait... maybe that's not a good thing? Ho boy.

"Maryse" as you may recall, is a 39 year old ex-children's-French teacher who "totally talks leik this and stuff, like OMG a wing bar waitress and junk" she's a Twilight fan and she is bat-shit crazy. The last time I talked about her she was trying to put a hex and a curse on my father, because he has gout. She thought she was a witch. 

Now, when I say witch, I don't mean "respectable follower of Wicca" oh no. I mean the stereotypical "And yer little dog TOO" type.

Keep in mind, she has already bred. She has a teenage son and a granddaughter.

Well since my last blog, Chicago Public Schools have re-hired her. Now "she leik totally OMG" tries to teach French and "proper thinking" to children 10 and under. Proper thinking you ask? Why yes. This loon actually believes that the book "Freakonomics" is a curriculum. I am not kidding. She even made my dad watch the movie version on repeat ~ for 10 hours straight ~ while he was hyped up on medication and wine. She said that wine would be a good mix for his medication. I'm thinking she is trying to kill him.

I actually bumped into her while shopping a month after the last blog was posted. Since she doesn't know I have a blog, I didn't see the need to tell her about it. I don't even use her real name, after all. I shook her cold, zombie hand and wished her the best with my dad.

Well in her book, saying "It's great to see you, I hope you and Dad are doing well" is (her words) German for "I hope you fall into a well and drown in rust water". Yeah, she thought it was German code.

She also claims that every friend I have ever had is a lie, my relatives are figments of my imagination, my blogs and websites don't exist and I'm somehow trying to mooch in on my father's "wealth". 

For the record, my father is uninsured and unemployed. He blew through the $10 an hour job money he had left quite a while ago, and now is a freelancer making less than minimum wage. He has all the pension of a ham sandwich. Exactly WHAT the hell fortune do you think he has, crazy lady??

She also claims that being a witch is boring her, so now she wants to be a Buddhist. Unfortunately, this psycho believes that reading books about Lao-tzu is the path to enlightenment, so I don't think she understands what being a Buddhist means. 

But recently, my house got a 2 a.m. phone-call. My father was relaying some very troubling news.

For several weeks in a row, Maryse was threatening to kill herself, and then come back as a poltergeist and kill him too. Then she decided not to kill herself, but instead threatened to will him into being deathly sick, cure him, make him sick again, and then magically have his gout kill him, so he can be reborn as a Black man, as punishment for having gout. 

If you read my last blog, you already know this is NOT the first time the racist psycho has done this.

So rather than just say "BYE BITCH" and hang up the phone, my idiot father actually went over to her house. Why that sounds so safe, doesn't it? Walking alone in the dark in the middle of the night, to the house of a crazy person threatening to kill you via mind-rays (again, her words not mine) and make you come back as a racial minority she hates. Sure, fine, go ahead. Totally alright.

So upon entry, he sees her caressing a broken pitcher.

Let me stop here and explain the pitcher. If you read my last blog about Maryse, then you know she takes my dad to garage sales all over the place. Well after I wrote that blog, he bought her a 1950's, mass manufactured pitcher for $1. This is the type of pitcher you find at the Goodwill, all over the store. There are literally millions of these things, and odds are good that if it's being sold at $1, it ain't that precious.

Well the pitcher is made of old glass. She put piping hot tea into the old, frail glass.

The old, frail, glass pitcher broke.

She thinks it's my dad fault for liking tea so much. If he didn't like tea, she wouldn't have had to make the tea and put it into the most frail, piece of glass possible. Never mind that he wasn't even in her house and never asked her for tea, oh no. By liking it, she must make it, and so it is his fault.

So there she is, caressing the shards of glass and weeping. He asks her what the problem is.

It's Charles.

I last blogged about Charles last year. For those who don't know, Charles is a stray cat that Maryse adopted... from Japan. She legit paid $500 to have the alley stray shipped from Japan to America. Only, she didn't adopt Charles legally. She just found him haphazardly in an alley, goosestepping between two boxes. She didn't bother to check if he had an owner. That's not even half of the problem. This is Charles:

A one-eyed Hitler cat. 

Charles has a bad cough. When he has a hairball, he goes "HEIL HEIL HEIL REEEEEICH" until it comes out. I can't make this up. I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to film this, but I'm highly allergic to cats.

Well recently, Charles was very sick. He also wouldn't go near her, even if the world stopped spinning. He wouldn't eat from her hand, wouldn't cuddle, he'd just wearily try to escape.

Charles started going out at night, and not coming back for days. Each time he came back, he'd be even more sick. The vet didn't want anything to do with him, since the cat tried to chew off his name tag.

(Please don't ask me to post the name. You get where this is going.)

So Maryse asked my dad to go looking for Charles. And like a complacent boyfriend, he did just that. Looking under bushes, in the alley, Charles is nowhere to be found.

Now on the day this blog takes place, she had phoned, screaming that Charles was dead, but when my dad got there, she retracted the story, saying only that she hasn't found Charles and thinks he "might" be dead. 

For the record, Charles has died about 6 times in the last two weeks, the second to last time, I was on the phone with a friend when Charles allegedly fell to his doom from her bedroom window, after she accidentally pushed him, then he rolled in the dirt and caught kitty-cancer. Then he rose up, coughed out the cancer but contracted another mysterious illness while crawling back tot he house. Now if he could survive that, I'm not opposed to the idea he may have survived a really long day's journey into the alley down the road from her.

Maryse is sad. Not because Charles has run away and might be dead though. Oh no, perish the thought. That would make far too much good sense.

She is sad, because she wants Charles to hurry back to her, and die peacefully at home, in her bed.

Then, (once more, her words not mine) once his soul has been released, she wants to turn him into a stole. So she can always have him near her, wherever she goes. 

I'm not joking around, her taxidermist is on speed dial. I didn't even know we had one in the area!

She says she wants to rub the fur of it with oils, and keep it's soul as her guardian, to watch over her when she tried to have my dad strangled in agony with gout.

But alas, Charles has disobeyed her, how dare he die on his own somewhere. She believes Charles has chosen to die elsewhere, just to spite her.

Now how does my dad handle this news?

He went straight home, and began mailing her postcards, forging Charles's signature. Yes, you read that right. She was in the process of teaching Charles to write, so he could show his appreciation for her. I seriously can't make this up.

So far, she truly believes the cards are from Charles, and hasn't yet pieced together that cats don't mail postcards. Especially not after they are dead.

.... And she's a Chicago Public School Teacher....

In search of Toon Makers ~ Release Sailor Saban Moon!

A year ago, I posted a blog about the infamous Toon Makers video. I re-rendered it in HD, posted it on one of my YouTube accounts, and just left it there.

For those of you who don't know, let me catch you up.

Sailormoon is my favorite anime and manga series.

I am also a purist when it comes to comics, meaning that I despise any production that tries to "re-in-vision" a comic's original story. (Let's make Spider-Man EMO! Let's not and say we did. >_O) The Sailormoon anime that ran from 1992-1997 in Japan, the first TMNT cartoon and a few of the Batman series' are the ONLY things I will actually give any leeway to when it comes to story.

With that said, you can imagine my utter shock and horror upon seeing that in 1994, a company called Toon Makers/Toonmakers tried to re-make Sailormoon for an American audience.

That looks NOTHING like Sailor Moon at all!!! It's freaking SHE-RA!!!

I don't know what offended me more. Seeing my beloved characters completely re-designed into sexualized stereotypes, (Mercury would no longer be the "smart one in this, as she was degraded into being into parties and boys in this version, also, Sailor Venus in the Toon Makers script threatens to kill a man over makeup) seeing the plot completely ripped to shreds, no wait. I have what offends me most right here:

Yeah, for trying to be racially sensitive, they managed to draw probably the most racially insensitive thing imaginable. >_O

Now I've been chronicling the whole mess on Moon Sisters, and I recently added a new sub-page, devoted to this ungodly mess: Toon Makers Sailor Moon ~ The Saban Moon Never Seen! Why is it called Saban Moon when Saban had nothing to do with it? Simple. It looks like they would have done it. Worse? Three of the companies that helped Saban birth Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Renascence, BanDai and Toei)  would have been a part of it, had it not been for the people at Toei Animation throwing the world's biggest conniption fit. (And thank God for it.)

But just to show you my own, personal Hell, here it is:

Now when I wrote that first blog, I didn't think anything of it. I had the entire back story of how it was made posted on a revised blog, and that was it. I just wanted to keep the history alive, and then run as fast as I could from it. I wound up putting a Sailormoon DVD on loop on the DVD player, just to wash this memory away.

But then came the news I dreaded hearing. Two words that shook me to my core.

"There's more."

Somewhere on VHS exists a full, 17 minute pilot. It has yet to surface, but I fear that day is coming quite soon.

Worse?

Well if you took a gander at my website just now, you probably noticed an asinine number of Toon Makers Sailor Moon cels. GAH!?!?!

Now the cels are being sold by several, different eBay sellers. But almost all of them are coming from California.

The sellers all have armloads full of "NOT" Sailor Moon, as well as She-Ra, X-Men, Archie, BraveStarr  and a whole catalog of other 80's-90's animation cels. ALL of them are drawn exactly the SAME.

This made me curious. Did Toon Makers die? Are they folding?

A visit to the Toon Makers website: Toon Makers Inc. didn't turn up anything new. In fact, the last site update was in 2008, and that was just to add a copyright date.

Their last known project is probably from 2003, but I can't actually verify that.

What I can verify is that they've done a great job of patting themselves on the back. Mostly for things they either did NOT do or should not be posting.

They falsely claim to have been behind the production team of two, very funny anime titles: Flint: Time Detective and Mon Collie Knights.

For the record, Sanrio created Flint, Enoki Films animated Flint, and Saban distributed it in the US. Toon Makers had zilch to do with Flint.

Mon Colle Knights was brought to us by Studio DEEN and Saban. Again, Toon Makers had NOTHING to do with Mondo, Rockna or anybody else on the show.

(By the way, if you can find them, let me know! I want the DVDs. ^_^)

Toon Makers also takes credit for a Darth Vader knock-off, called "Darth Vapor". Not exactly what I'd be advertising if I was my own company. If you scroll left to right on their page, you'll notice a few other designs that look suspicious.

But outside of a few cartoon ads that I can verify existing, I can't find anything they've legit done or finished after 2003. You know something's wrong when Google turns up empty handed. The only thing I got was their current contact information:

Rocky Solotoff On LinkedIn and on Facebook

Raymond I.

17333 Ludlow St.

Granada Hills , CA 91344

Phone: (818) 832-8666

Web: www.toonmakers.com 

Email: info@toonmakers.com

Data.com entry

Their Toon Digital page has been shut down. The page would have been the hub for their CGI goods. The main "About" page has them touting work they claim to have done for FOX, including Fern Gully, the first Tom & Jerry movie, The Pagemaster and the top movies from Don Bluth. I've rented all of them and have read the credits. Toon Makers is 100% ABSENT from mention. Matter of fact, another film they take credit for (Fievel Goes West) is in my video cabinet. I've seen the film 22 times and still have the VHS box. Toon Makers is not mentioned.

This leads me to question if Toon Makers is a fraudulent company, save but for this one video. Outside of my other blog post, ALL mentions of them working on these films are solely on their About page. The credits they claim do not exist anywhere else but on their own website.

Founder Rocky Solotoff did work as one of the many "producers" for the FOX, Saban and Don Bluth projects, but not Toon Makers, as each of these films had their own stock of animators, editors and the like. There wouldn't have been a need for Toon Makers.

There is one Art and Design entry where they lifted a Power Ranger drawing, and then lied, claiming it to be their own "Gladiator" sketch, and then there's a blank Facebook page, and an article about home-made animation studios from Creative Planet with the date missing, but nothing more.

A post from Crunchyroll in 2009 proclaimed the company "defunct" which offers little in the ways of an explanation. There's no timetable for when this could have mercifully happened, and doesn't explain why the website is still up, there are LinkedIn accounts for the founder and one other person ~ both claiming that Toon Makers Inc. is still open for business ~ and it also does not explain why they are still listed by various art schools and business websites as viable, active portals for job-seekers.
(Though admittedly, most of these job listings are a farce, but that's another story.)
Most of the business sites just copy-paste from Toon Makers's page.

But in concurrence with Crunchyroll's story, Rocky Solotoff's Facebook states that we was there until 2010, though he pops up again in a 2011 article, linking to the Toon Makers page. Then recently in 2012, an article from Corporation Wiki proclaimed the company "active" in the state of California and Solotoff as it's owner.

But no sooner had the article been posted was the internet flooded with these lost cels.

So which is it? Is Toon Makers Inc. dead or alive?

Is this all just now coming out because a second anime is on the way?

I fear the answer to these and the location of that lost, 17 minute pilot are not that far behind...

A letter to the lost...

(NOTE: I'll post a more funny blog in a bit. This is just one last thing I want to get off my chest.)

I wanted to come home in time.

I never understood why my father dragged us all over the place. He said it was for his "career" but when you make a "career" out of getting fired from one retail job after another, it hardly seems worth six years of travel.

Oh sure, I learned alot, and the people I saw back then turned me into who I am right now, and I don't think I could be a better person without those experiences. In fact, I've made peace with it all. I have a reminder every day that it all worked out for the best.

But really, I miss you. I'll never forget that day in September of 1997 when Mama came downstairs with the news. I never understood the phrase "you can't go home again" until that moment.

Every December when we lived back home, Mama would bake a ton of sweet potato pies, and then we'd drive up to see you. Naomi would be in the kitchen, waiting with a kiss. And sometimes you'd call around, and Aunt Cleotha, Uncle Richard, everybody, everybody would come over. We'd all have pie, and there was talking and laughter. Always, it felt like a party. I still remember losing a few skin layers on the plastic covered sofa, when I tried to get up to greet someone and forgot the heat was on. The crinkling of the thick, heavy photo albums with all the glued in photos of Native American relatives I still haven't met yet. This visit was always the signal to me that Christmas really was coming soon.

But we don't have Decembers like that anymore.

All of you are gone now, except for Pam, she lives in the city. But I guess you knew that already.

And your son is doing alright with his girlfriend. You'd be proud of him. He's been clean for 16 years next month, and he's getting into motivational speaking. A few years back, he was part of a rally, to bring benefits and safer working conditions to a ton of people in California. He and Mama long ago reconciled their issues with all the times he was absent when she was growing up, so they're thick as thieves now. Best friends.

Your adopted daughter last I heard was up north, but I haven't seen her in ages.

Every December now, I look over to Mama, and I say "Hey! Let's hurry and bake those pies for..." and I remember you're gone. I shake my head, say "never mind" and then cheerfully request sweets anyways.... probably not a GOOD idea for my health, since everyone down here is afraid of diabetes and the obesity monster... but whatever, Mama's a good cook and I'll work it off.

I have blood, but we all live far away. The family I have up here, I adopted. And I want to talk to you about them, but I'll get to that in a bit.

 Anyway, I'm not typing this out to talk about Christmas. It's 7 weeks away after all. I'm just trying an experiment. They say that people can see from the other side, and that if there is a Heaven, it's likely past the Milky Way, and not in the clouds as we once thought. But we've chucked more than a few satellites up there, so if you can't see this now, hang tight. NASA will fix it shortly.

I'm typing to let you know... we did it.

We have a man in office, who is Black, White, and just became a two term president.

A two term, ethnic president.

Want to know the best part?

WHITE people voted him in!! :D

No really. They did!

... I know, RIGHT????

They voted not because he's Black, they voted because they liked his platform. He could have been blue, green, polka-dotted, and they would have voted for him anyways!

We finally live in that world Dr. King talked about in Alabama. That world where little Black kids and Little White kids could play together? Yeah, that's actually today. You've only been gone since 1997, so you already saw all the integration as it happened... but a TWO TERM BLACK PRESIDENT, OMG right???

I have White friends who are as good to me as family now. (My adopted kin.) They don't even notice I'm Mixed. They don't seem to care much at all about it, just as long as I'm still .. well I guess the word is.. me. Nobody seems to care if they catch me hanging out with them either. It's no longer a Life Magazine story, it's just called "Saturday" now. (Or Monday or Tuesday, ect.) So I'm ok.

There are still some places that hold racist riots, but those people are called "idiots" now. Nobody seems to pay heed to their words anymore.

...We even have Black Disney Princes and Princesses now.... no REALLY, we do! We had a Chinese Princess after you died, too. They're not novelties, and nobody was in Blackface, it's for real. Like a normal Disney movie, just with different paint!

All that marching you did, the rallies, it all paid off. We're all the same, and it seems like everyone is evolving.

We're all friends now, and we have that world that you wanted to see.

We're doing ok now.

Thanks, Great Grandpa.

Love,
Kori

There's no such thing as a woman who "just has" an abortion.

Let me preface this by saying that while I'm pro-choice, I do want to be a mom one day. I've never been pregnant, never, not once, didn't even try the video game demo at the store, but I have studied the phenomenon, and it doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea. 

I'm not going to raise a stink about it, chase a dude down in a parking lot for it, or randomly drop a few grand to some doctor in a strip mall with a turkey baster, but it just so happens that I like kids.

It's morons I have a problem with. Especially those who hide behind the Bible, but never read it.

First thing this morning, I got up to vote. My nearest voting poll is at a church, and is generally run by friendly faces. They don't mind people of other faiths, and in case you're curious, NO I did NOT catch fire upon entry.

Waiting outside, circling the masses like starving vultures getting off the Atkins' diet, were two fat women, handing out cards and demanding to see our voting cards.

You should know by now that I'm not stupid enough to fork over my voting card to any random stranger in a J.C. Penny coat.

"Hi thenk yew fer comin owt tuday" Screeches a woman in a wing bar waitress voice. "Meek shur yew heve yer voturs registreeshun cerd, okeee?" 

She hands my mom a card.

"Who is this?" Mama asks.

"It's fer a Republiceeen."

"No thank you. I'd rather you not cut down anymore trees for cards like these."

The woman glares at us (as Mama puts it) like we spat in her cookies.

So I vote, and upon exiting the church, I hear the two fat ladies making fun of someone they read about on Facebook. "What's wrong with morons todeey? I KNOW people who have abeertions left and right. I hope they die. hahahahahaha Leik WOW man, even a rape baby is a baby."

Now I am in a CHURCH parking lot. Granted, a church across the street from a tobacconist and a bar, and a church that shares a parking lot with the second largest fireworks store in the state, but it's a CHURCH anyway. And I haven't had my coffee yet. And I'm floating by on less than 4 hours of sleep and I already have a migraine starting. I'm not so devious as to curse out a pair of morons on sacred ground.... a fifth time. Generally, my discussions look like this:

And always, I hear the same, lame excuse from everybody who sears they're a Christian.

"Well ... I KNOW women who just HAVE abortions all the time."

REALLY?? You do? AWESOME! Why don't you send me a video, picture, her name and phone number, or better yet, have the bitch email me and then post a public comment, right under this blog, because...

I DON'T BELIEVE SHE FUCKING EXISTS!!

Wake up and smell the roses people, there is NO such thing as a woman who "just has" an abortion. They do not exist. 

You have a better chance of finding Bigfoot ~ swimming in my backyard ~ while wearing roller skates and YODELING in Swahili.

Every woman who has had one, whether it's because she's been raped, it's incest, she's broke and can't afford it, the child will be born dead/sick or it's egg-topic and it comes down to her OR the fetus, I promise you, she has had plenty of time to grieve, question herself, and ask if she's going to Hell because of it.

And I am sick to death of people who say "well just give it up for adoption then" REALLY?? Let me take you through pregnancy, and what FOR REAL happens to a woman:

1. Your organs are rearranged to house this thing. Why do I say thing? Because until birth ~ WAKE UP ~ it is NOT a born child yet. That's why they don't call fetuses "born". It is NOT capable of being a fully functional, living thing until BIRTH. Until then, it is (I hate saying this because I do actually like babies a whole lot) fully reliant upon the woman. These science experiments take up ALOT of space, so the organs MUST move. Life does NOT begin until birth. 

2. You gain weight, why? Because your uterus fills with amniotic fluid. Also you need to maintain a certain amount of weight in order for the fetus to draw nutrients from you. That's right, whatever YOU eat, the fetus gets a hefty chunk of it. I hope you appreciate your mom more now that you've read this, because until you were truthfully a BORN person, you were taking everything from her, like those creepy aliens in those horror movies from the 80's.

3. Your hormones go out of control.

4. You now have to purchase bigger clothes, clothes for the child, furniture, food, diapers, lotion, all sorts of things for what "may" be a born person. Do you think that comes free?? Don't be stupid! We have:

NO Government program that covers prenatal clothing.

NO Government program that covers prenatal care ~ without an assload of paperwork and DCFS trying to take the baby from you FOREVER.

And if you think for one minute that there are ANY jobs that want to hire pregnant women, you've lost your mind. Whatever didn't get outsourced to China still won't take her ~ because pregnancy is a RISK. Think hard, if ANYTHING happens to that fetus while she's on the job, the company is LIABLE.

5. Total strangers call you "pregnant welfare whore" until you pop. This even happens to monogamous, MARRIED women. 

6. Assuming the fetus makes it to "birth-day" the woman's body contracts, stretches, rips itself open or otherwise is CUT apart, just to get the kid out. And don't think for one minute those drugs they give you are safe. Plenty of women get sick or die on the table, trying to give birth.

7. The hospital will charge you upwards of $10-20,000 for giving birth. Do you think your precious little insurance companies will cover it? HA HA WRONG!! And that's not even counting the untold thousands that go into prenatal doctor visits or the child's first year of WEEKLY pediatrician visits ~ and that's if he/she's born healthy! Price skyrockets up if the poor thing has a medical condition.

So "just give it up for adoption" hardly seems like an affordable option. Do YOU have $20,000??

If it was YOUR body, how would you feel?

I used to live in a neighborhood full of parents who had been bullied out of abortion. Oh sure, they loved each other, but they openly hated their kids. And DCFS wouldn't let them put them up for adoption, without coming back to take ALL the other "wanted" children. Forever. Like you get NO go-backs here. You never see them again.

Do you have any idea what it does to a kid to know he only exists, because a church he NEVER goes to, bullied his parents into keeping him when "dear old Mom" was 13 and repeating the 7th grade? 

The kids I lived near got into gangs, sex and all kinds of trouble. Their parents didn't care and could not get rid of them, without Johnny Law kicking down the door. Oh yeah, they sure did feel "saved" didn't they?

And yet there are people, hiding behind the Bible, claiming that a woman's rights are a "sin". Funny, I don't remember any such passage in there. But here's what I do remember from the book:

Deuteronomy 20:17 has a bit in there where God allowed the mass killing of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites ~ including pregnant women. That is the biggest, mass abortion I've ever heard of. Good grief! Now mind you, there was a plan for this in the long run, but you'd be ignorant to miss this passage.

Genesis: 34 has a segment where Dinah, daughter of Jacob ~ was raped. She was NOT told "just deal with it and have whatever happens" NOPE! There was justice for her ~ as GOD DOES NOT EVER CONDONE RAPE!!

And let's not forget three more passages, for those of you still calling abortion a sin:

(Acts 13:39 ) - "and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses."

(Titus 2:13-14 ) - "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds."

(1 John 1:9 ) - "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In case you can't read, let me spell it out. ALL SINS ARE ABSOLVED THROUGH JESUS if you really believe he exists. 

And if you really believe in a God, and you think he created everything, then you must know that science is high on the list of things he made. Evolution is not just something atheists talk about you know.

So let that be the end of that, Christians.

Don't be a ditz, VOTE!!

I'm often shocked when people say "Well I hate them ALL, Why bother voting? It doesn't matter."

I get it, the two party system is outdated. But what do you expect, when every Libertarian  Independent and Green Party candidate gives up on themselves, cries like a little girl on Twitter, and turns out to be a Tea Partier in disguise?

"I'm gonna beat the system and create change. Wait... I have to worry about Libya, Iran, Iraq and Terrorists?? All the US jobs are in China and there are old farts calling the unemployed losers because they can't get the job that's now in Beijing? There are Gays and Women being treated like animals and people are trying to revoke their rights because they believe in false profits who wear ugly robes instead of actually believing in science and the notion that God made us to evolve? The economy is in the toilet? Oh no. No I'm not ready for this. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve OOOOOOoooo *waives hands* OMG OMG OMG Um um... vote for the other guy!! *cries* Mommy??"

Give me a Ross Perot over any of those "kind-of-pendants" PLEASE.

I don't know. Maybe it's because I watched the dubbed version of the second Pokemon film, where they drive the point home that it really "only takes one person" but I feel that every voice matters, even in a cracked system where the electoral college (secluded from reality, living in a basement somewhere in Washington DC with the A/C turned off 100% of the time) decides most of the nation's future for us, one vote can still mean the difference between "eh, could be better" and "JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH they brought us back to 1865!!"

And I'm sick of the morons who pick candidates based on religion. Am I the only person left alive, who read the passage in the Bible, where Jesus turned over the change tables and protested against the church?? REALLY?? New Testament people, thumb through it once in a while. If you really believe there is a God somewhere, then don't you think he'd want us to EVOLVE??

Oh, and you want to cancel out my rights to my own body as a woman, because you think my having a choice is a "sin". So you DON'T believe that all sins are absolved through Jesus? Then you must not believe in Jesus at all if you're trying to kill my rights, and the rights of the Gay friends I have. Some Christian you turned out to be.

But enough about that, we have separation of church and state anyway. It's what stops us from being like the Taliban. Bunch of freaks, the lot of them.

But anyway, let's go back to the story of why not only am I voting, but I've encouraged other people to vote as well.

In my family, voting is considered a high priority. Reason being? We've only had it for a few generations.

On my mother's father's side, I can trace his roots to a plantation out in Alabama. While I can't go too far for his father's side (more on him in a bit) I can go back to my Great Grandmother's Great Grandma, Mandy.

Great-Gran-Mandy was what they called "High Yellow" or "High Yella". That means she was pale enough to pass for White, and pass she could. She had light hair, light eyes and freckles. If she walked, nobody would have known that she was part Black. She was either the daughter or granddaughter of the man who owned the plantation, a man named William Craig. When he died, he left her a trunk of dresses and pretty things. Things a slave would not ordinarily have, but a descendant would.

The next owner of the plantation mated her off to the darkest man he could find, so she's have a child (Johanna) and feel forced to stay on the plantation, rather than to pick up and leave. During the course of the next few years, she had to watch has family and friends were bought and sold off, like used sneakers on eBay.

Even after slavery ended in 1865, my family did not have the right to vote. Mandy and Johanna never had the freedoms we take for granted today.

The right for a man of color to vote, was not ratified as the 15th amendment until February 3, 1870. But even back then, if you went to a voting place that was largely segregated, you would have to endure taunts, teasing, and sadly, deadly lynchings, before you'd reach the poll. People would curse you, call you names, and plenty of places would turn away Colored voters.

As for women? HA! The right for a woman to vote wasn't ratified until August 18, 1920. That is 50 years, six months and 15 days after the right for Colored people to vote was made legal. 

It wasn't an easy fight either. Women before the right was ratified were often times jailed, beaten, sent to mental wards and even sterilized. Oh yeah. Our country 'tis of thee was into Eugenics long before Hitler. And that's a sick, disgusting and frightening concept. I'm actually more frightened by US History than I am the standard horror flick!

And you would think it ends there on that sunny day in 1920. NOPE!

My ancestors had to fight even after that, as voting polls were tight under the Jim Crow watch. If you were a Black woman trying to vote as recently as the 1950's, catcalls and slurs would be your BEST hope.

And I knew a man in my own family who was no stranger to catcalls:

This is my Great Grandpa. And I'm lucky to say I got to know him before it was too late.

When he was growing up, he didn't have the chance to go to an integrated school. He went to a school designated for Black kids. His books were hand-me-downs, often with pages missing or messed up with snack food grease. 

So what he would do, is he'd drag his little brother and little sister over to the White schools. They'd sit by the window and learn from there. And always, they'd have people ~ starting with adults ~ catcalling them, throwing rocks at them, all because they wanted an education.

When his parents died young, he left the 8th grade and went straight to work, to support his brother and sister. He was a smart man too, I'm sorry I didn't get all of my math genes from him. He saved his money and spent wisely. Despite the odds, he did live the American Dream for the most part. Bought his own land, built a house on it, put his siblings through school, his son, and plenty of other people. Even saved enough to fully pay off his own funeral and resting place a decade in advance, and go on one annual vacation and change out the car when he felt the need to.

But the struggle didn't cease. He knew that he still didn't have the freedom to walk down his own street if a White man did. He knew that he couldn't shop or eat at the same places as everyone else. 

And most of all, his son had just had a daughter with a White woman, but they weren't allowed to get married anyplace near the army base where they met, without his son going to prison.

Ah... something had to change.

He marched in Alabama with Dr. King. (Yes, THAT one.) He survived race riots, and just like any other red blooded American, he voted.

I said he voted.

He voted, and let his voice be heard.

He got his family and his friends to vote. It was like second nature to them.

He was told that it wouldn't matter. That everyone sucks so why bother? He was told that he was just playing into a "corporate fantasy" and that nobody could change the future. Voting doesn't matter. Nothing changes. Nobody cares if you vote. Don't vote, don't do it, voting means nothing. He was told all of this.

...He also sat front row, when his Black son married a White woman. 

HA HA.

We don't know what vote was the deciding factor in deciding who would take office in each of the states where officials signed off on the notion of it being legal to marry outside of your race. We don't know which civilian exactly, sent in the final card that broke down a Jim Crow rule here or there. But nobody in my family cared. They voted anyways.

Every vote, no matter how weak or feeble does count. It counts somewhere, and in the history books, it's always noted when someone has tampered with the machines to erase the American peoples' choice, to fatten the wallets of already rich morons. Even there, those votes count.

So tomorrow morning, I'm voting. I have alot on the line here.

I have not only my rights as a woman to vote for, but the rights of every woman. My cousins, my second cousins, any female prodigy I might have. That's alot of ovaries to think about!

I have to pick between a moron who used Bain Capital to send MY US jobs overseas, and a dude who's picked on because he's not God, and people think that "Hawaii born Christian" is spelled M-U-S-L-I-M.

I have to vote between someone trying to rebuild my economy, and a dog-hating fat cat who wants to kill the last of my generation in another fake war.

I have to vote between some guy trying to get congress to stop vetoing every job creating bill he signs off on, and someone who just sent my last job to China, in exchange for lead paint goods and combustible laptops filled with BPA's.

I have alot riding on this vote.

I can't chicken out now.

Home is where the Wal*Mart is

"This right here is where Mama and your uncle Shingo grew up! Now unbuckle the baby, Chibiusa. Candy-corn Oreo's are on sale and your daddy has a coupon!"

So on this, the eve of my 26th birthday, I got some unexpected news.

I'm sure you recall that in July of 2011, I posted this blog: http://codenamesailorearth.blogspot.com/2011/07/guess-whos-close-to-homeless-victim-of.html long story short, my parents got snookered into a predatory lending scheme and NationStar wants to foreclose on the house.

Now after I stopped crying, I got wise and shared the blog around. I found other people going through the exact same problem, and the blog went viral.

For the record, I've never believed in the adage of "We don't air our dirty laundry" because there are other people going through what I am ~ AND WORSE. Why keep the pain bottled up when I can share it, and let a few people know that they are totally NOT alone? If my pain can result in one less person feeling alone, one less person contemplating suicide, then it's worth whatever embarrassment or "shame" this causes me. If I can make one less person feel ashamed of their situation, so be it. I'm not scared.

But I did only tell a select few. I didn't want to worry anybody, unless I knew for sure how this story was going to end.

One month later, the threats came to a screeching halt. And I had a good nine months worth of quiet.

Of course, my mom isn't stupid, so during the lull, she got a lawyer to help sort this mess out. He's also a divorce lawyer, so for one reasonable fee, we can deal with the house, and my parents long overdue divorce is almost over. I can't tell you how big of a blessing that is. >< No more refereeing fights between those two, just because my "DAD" has an obsession with cutting into my wrestling feed so he can watch Project Runway or American Idol. THANK GOD. MY PARENTS ARE 99.99% DIVORCED!!

Well two months ago, we get a call from the lawyer. The house was set to go on auction TODAY. Nothing quite says "Happy Birthday Kori" like "Get the F out" does it?

Well the lawyer managed to halt the auction for a while. I don't know how long "a while" is, but it was long enough to run a Google search.

Turns out that my whole freaking block is up for grabs. Ah... WHAT??

Here's how it's going down.

The city I live in wants more commerce. The hundreds of businesses around here just aren't enough, so they want to take out my block, and it looks like the next few blocks over, since over 100 houses are up ~ starting with fully PAID OFF houses. Yeah, I said PAID OFF. As in "the debt has done ceased to be" and stuff.

But the city doesn't want to do imminent domain ~ because that would give everybody in my block a stipend for the houses. We'd each have a little less than what the house is for real worth, which would be enough to find a new place to live and move. Perish the thought! We don't want to pay people for their own houses!

So instead, they have the banks all playing screwy with my neighborhood. So now any house under the guidance of NationStar, Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan and the rest of 'em are up for grabs.

Same goes for the Sub-way, Tobacco shop, fireworks stores, car dealership and even the church I vote at, which are now up for sale. (The church might be saved, but I have no data on that.)

So this morning, while my house's sale was stopped, everybody else on the block had their houses group bid on by "an anonymous investor". No, that doesn't sound shady or anything.

So I decided to look around, see what exactly they intend to do with over 100 houses and a few strip-malls.

Ah.

They want to put up another Wal*Mart.

... About 2.7 miles away from the other Wal*Mart near the heart of the city.

... No really. I'm not joking. They want to build a Wal*Mart 2.7 miles away from an already established Wal*Mart.

Say, do you remember when "The American Dream" wasn't just Dusty Rhodes's nickname, but it also meant owning your own home & having a really good paying job, benefits and a vacation every year? My mom said it was a cool time to be alive in. Too bad I missed that.

This is the American NIGHTMARE, this is everything my grandparents constantly complain about, this is not the America they anticipated. What the hell happened??

So while sipping my coffee, taking this news in, I looked at my baby brother. (Okay, he's 20 and twice my size, but dammit I have five years over him.) And I placed my arm around his shoulder, and told him something quite sad.

When he was eight years old, my mom drove us to one of the places she grew up in. It's still standing and owned by a very sweet couple, who showed us around the property. She took us to her first apartment, which is now Rosa Parks Middle School. The building itself was torn down for the school, but it's one of the better schools in a very bad neighborhood, and they try to do right by the kids, so it all works out. The trailer she used to live in is also still standing, and the neighborhood hasn't changed.

I told my brother that we can never have a moment like this with our kids.

No.

Now the first place I lived in was an apartment in Lansing. It's still standing, but the exact floor I lived on was burnt to a crisp, overrun with vermin and had drug dealers squatting in it before the fire. So it's been totally rebuilt, but aesthetically, it looks the same as it did in 1990 when I moved.

The first house my brother lived in was a teeny-weeny, Snow White cottage. It was a Sears home, one of the first ever in the area, and although it had a massive problem with creepy crawlies and mold, and was too tiny to have a thought in, it was adorable. And my ancient aged neighbors were friendly. Everybody baked and shared stories, and it was the all American home.

When I was 12, it was gutted out and "updated". Didn't even look the same. When I was 14, it was boarded up and condemned. I have no idea what happened after that, but it broke my heart to see it in shambles.

The next house was a townhouse in Virginia Beach. We lived there for a year and then abruptly had to move to New Jersey. That whole weekend I protested. I wanted to go home to Chicago. New Jersey is NOT Chicago. Why was I even moving to begin with??

Have you ever heard "there's always a reason" or "God has a plan"? This was one of those moments.

I moved on a Friday, was on a plane to Jersey Friday night.

Saturday morning there was a flood that ran through the townhouse complex we lived in. The front of the house spilled out into the street.

Sunday the rest of the house caved in on itself, taking the whole strip of houses with it.

Monday the landlord was taken into custody for fraud.

Tuesday he was on Dateline.

O_O; Okay OKAY Things happen for a reason.

The hotel I lived in in Wayne is underwater. The apartment I lived in in Wharton is part of a store.

The room I had in Reading is now an office.

The last house I lived in I HOPE has caved in, because it's not up to code, was owned by a Derpasaurus Rex, and almost caved on me when I was moving the boxes out. It also flooded like crazy, had wires from the 1930's left over, an ancient furnace and the insulation ~ I kid you not ~ was literally newspaper. Yeah, nothing quite says "ready for winter" like brown, water damaged papers that say "I Like Ike".

My current home is falling apart (see other blog) and is now in danger of becoming a Wal*Mart.

That makes me a little sad.

Someday, the place that I lay my head down and call "home" will be the men's goods section of a retail giant.  My basement will be cemented over. My kitchen and bathroom will be the baby goods and buttwipes department.

And my bedroom, currently pink and cheerful with dozens of wrestling and Sailormoon memorabilia, will be just one section of an aisle, where an obese woman with pock marks and a "mo'billity skooter" will be putt-putt-putting her way to a display. Her glassy eyes all beady with cataracts, will dart over to a display. And with a gasp, she'll lean over, grasp hold of a tenderly wrapped, mas manufactured plastic case, and yell out into the wilderness:

"HONEY BOO BOO!! They got tha candy-corn Oreo's on SALE!! Get Momma the cart!!"

And an obese child, wearing clothes much too adult for her own good, will roll down the aisle where my mom had once set my coffee cup on a little table for me, and she'll say "HOO-WEE MOMMA! An' they got the Disney Princess Leia dollies too! Can I have this one? She's got a dress on that's as sweet as honey, chil'e!" And she'll roll and tumble right past the lane that once had my bookshelf, and adjust her shorts, with the phrase "juicy" bedazzled on the back, and the two will beep on past the men's jeans display, where my TV set is now.

...

♫ Happy Birthday tooo meeeeeeee ~ Happy Birthday toooo meeeeeeeee ~ Happy Birthday dear Korianderrrrrrrrr ~ ... *whimpers, bites lip, cries* ~ Happy birthday to meeeEEEEeeeeee.... ♫