medical frustration

During the process of hitting snooze yesterday morning, I rolled over at one point, and then thought, "Hm, that felt funny." I then figured out that something had gotten out of place in my back which made moving my right arm rather painful. The full force of the problem was brought in upon me when I got up to get dressed, which was an extremely frustrating experience. I had problems moving my arm all day, because it would hurt unpredictably (i.e. there was no certain move that would always hurt, and nothing that always wouldn't.) I can best describe it as a shooting ache.

I hoped this would go away last night, but it hasn't, although I think it's better. Is this a pinched nerve? What's going on?

signal-boost of the day

Ready to get mad?

Albertsons pulls Seventeen magazine from its shelves because it has an article titled Vagina 101.

The article itself can be found here.

Brought to you by Raising Your Blood Pressure, Inc. Both links courtesy of the feminist community.

In other news, despite balmy weather, the new week is not starting out markedly better than the last one. Had a student I'm GA for piss me off this morning by being quite rude, and sent him a nasty e-mail. We'll see what the fall-out is. But really, sometimes nasty e-mails are not only deserved, but warranted.

feminism today

Aha! Now I know why it's so hard to get any! Maureen Dowd explains it all...and sadly reflects on how not-far feminism has come. Article forwarded by cycon. If you want to log into the NY Times site, use the username "letmeinpiggy" and the password "chinnychin".

I have to say, I really do feel that having a substantial IQ and well-formed, out-spoken opinions is a big liability in the romance department. Not a year ago, I was complaining about the fact that my then-crush, in retrospect mercifully brief, was interested in someone with substantially lower IQ than I. One of the reasons I hang with the geek boys is that I really think it's the only arena where there's any hope for me at all. Oh, and let's not even get into the liability of having a black belt. I may not be the most perspicacious person on the planet, but you'd have to be blind not to notice the look many men get in their eyes when someone (generally a female friend) proudly announces that you have a black belt. It's not a look of sudden passion, trust me.

And it's not a topic that I really have felt comfortable bringing up before, because it's SOOO whiny, not to mention INCREDIBLY arrogant. "Boo hoo, look at me, I'm so smart and nobody's interested, it must be because men don't like smart women, because what possible other reason could there be for anybody not being attracted to me?" I mean, truly, how obnoxious can you be?

But then there's the aspect of calling it like you see it. And what I see is that the average man (none of whom exist on my friends list, btw) looks at a smart or talented or opinionated woman, gets intimidated, and leaves. Instead of looking, being impressed and getting interested. I know I can't be crazy because danger_chick has mentioned the difficulty of finding a guy not intimidated by a PhD and a black belt.

I would be interested in hearing people's opinions on this, of both genders, please. And I'm not really looking for "Smart women are great!" comments. What I'm looking for is, what percentage of the population do you believe finds smart women attractive?