Dumfounded Dreamer

Support my friend by reblogging and following Team Interrobang. Happy Saturday!

teaminterrobang:

WANT THIS COOL STUFF?!

Includes:
Journal
Chalkboard (ones that you can post anywhere)
New Years Resolution book
TO DO list

CONTEST RULES:
1. Must reblog this post by the contest end date: 2/10/2012. Likes do not count. You do not have to follow this blog (but that’s always…

I am so so so so so happy for Amit! Congratulations buddy, you made it!

superamit:

Many of you have asked, so here’s what’s going on with me.

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE

• 8/1979: Born. Grew up in CT, built a killer eraser collection, fell in love with computers.
• Left college to start a company. Fell hard. Fled to India for 3 months.
• Started 2nd company. Learned to be an adult. Fell in love with NYC.
• Moved to SF, discovered burritos & some of my fave people on Earth.
• 9/2011: Got diagnosed with Leukemia!
• Cried. Went through 3 cycles of chemo. Hurt. Thought hard about what I want out of life. Grew up a second time.

TODAY

… After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs, tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor!

You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)

WHAT HAPPENS NOW

Tomorrow, I’ll be admitted to Dana Farber in Boston for 4-5 weeks.

First I’ll get a second Hickman line to allow direct access to my heart (for meds and for nutrients if I’m not able to eat). Over the next week, the docs blast my body with a stiff chemo cocktail to try and eradicate all traces of cancer cells. In the process, the immune system I was born with, and my body’s ability to make blood, are destroyed.

Next Friday, I get my donor’s stem cells by IV. I start on immunosuppressants to prevent my body from rejecting them (I’ll be on them for 12-18 months). For these weeks I’ve no immune system, so I’m severely vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. My hospital room and hallway become my world.

Meanwhile, the stem cells make their way to my bone marrow and, with some luck, start producing platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own.

This is science fiction stuff. I can hardly believe it’s even possible, and there’s lots of chances for things to go wrong. It’s frightening.

AFTER THE TRANSPLANT

Recovery to a new state of “normal” takes about a year, but there’s a few storm clouds hovering:

• My immune system is new, like a baby’s. I’m prone to getting sick.
• Just as with any organ transplant, there’s a chance of rejection. Except in this case, it’s my blood that’s the foreign body, and it touches every organ. They call it graft-vs-host-disease and it can cause health issues and organ complications for the rest of my life.
• Successful transplant or not, Leukemia can relapse. Stubborn mofo.

Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. My odds are a little better since I’m young.

THE GREAT NEWS

I’ve got a long road ahead. But I’ve got a donor & amazing family & friends. A few months ago I didn’t have many options. Today I have a plan.

I am alive. I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Thank you.

(via mohandasgandhi)

This is atrocious. Santorum opposing welfare for black people, equating gay marriage with loving your mother in law, and more! Read up!

_______________________________________________

1. Opposing birth control
Quote: ”One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (Speaking withCaffeinatedThoughts.com, Oct. 18, 2011)

Reaction: This is “pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception,” says Irin Carmon at Salon. “Any and all of it.” Threatening to “send the condom police into America’s bedrooms” is pretty bad politics: More than 99 percent of sexually active women have used some form of birth control, and “helping people get access to birth control is actually a popular issue,” supported by 82 percent of Americans. But a national contraception ban is “clearly the world Santorum wants.”

2. Keeping moms at home
Quote: ”In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to. … What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else — or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon — find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism.” (Santorum’s 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good)

Reaction: Santorum is actually right, says Bonnie Alba at Renew America. Degrading “the stay-at-home wife and mother while idolizing women who chose careers” is “certainly part and parcel of the feminist ideology which has twisted our society into a pretzel of me-ism.”

3. Re-spinning the Crusades
Quote: ”The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. … What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers. What we’re talking about are core American values.” (South Carolina campaign stop, Feb. 22, 2011)

Reaction: ”If you were worried there wouldn’t be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!” says Jillian Rayfield at Talking Points Memo. The religiously sanctioned European military campaigns were aimed at recapturing Jerusalem, and “along the way the Roman Catholic forces massacred thousands of Jews, among others.” I know the Crusades predated the U.S. by a few centuries, but how exactly does this military campaign reflect “core American values”?

4. Rejecting the very idea of “Palestinians”
Quote: ”All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Nov. 18, 2011)

Reaction: ”The striking thing about his comments is that they represent an even more conservative position than that taken by the Israeli government,” says Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post. Israel’s anti-Palestinian position itself isn’t “accepted by much of the world, but it seems that the very least a potential U.S. president could do is accept the definitions used by the Israeli government.”

5. Reminding America that some view Mormonism as “a dangerous cult”
Quote: ”Would the potential attraction to Mormonism by simply having a Mormon in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, Dec. 20, 2007)

Reaction: Santorum was responding to Mitt Romney’s famous speech reassuring evangelical Christians that he shares their values, and to be fair, “Santorum’s ultimate verdict on Romney was more or less positive,” says Dan Froomkin at The Huffington Post. But he draws plenty of “distinctions between Mormonism and Christianity that others have avoided lest they seem overly inflammatory.”

6. Dissing welfare programs that “make black people’s lives better”
Quote: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012)

Reaction: ”This is the sort of subtle racism” that should, but won’t, harm Santorum among Republicans, says Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. Why did he single out black people when talking about cutting government aid?

7. Bringing race into Obama’s abortion views
Quote: ”The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person — human life is not a person, then — I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’” (CNS News interview, Jan. 19, 2011)

Reaction: Equating fetuses to slaves got Santorum some pretty bad press,says David Weigel at Slate. But critics don’t “appreciate how mainstream Santorum’s point is among pro-life activists” who commonly “consider their work a continuation of other movements that protected human life and elevated the status of people whom the law doesn’t consider ‘human.’ In the 19th century, it was African-Americans; in the 21st century, it’s children in the womb.”

8. Equating gay marriage to loving your mother-in-law
Quote: ”Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, May 22, 2008)

Reaction: Did noted “homophobe” Santorum just admit to a “weird sexual relationship with his mother-in-law” and brother? says Michael J.W. Stickings at The Reaction. He may be atop the Republican heap, “but make no mistake about it, Santorum’s still a bigot and a moron.”

9. Comparing homosexuality to “man-on-dog” sex
Quote: ”If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. … That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” (AP interview, April 7, 2003)

Reaction: ”Rick Santorum has expended a great deal of thought and energy to finding new words to disparage gay marriage,” says Daryl Lang at Breaking Copy. And even if you agree with Santorum, “would you really want a president who is this obsessed” with gay sex?

(Source: kohenari, via mohandasgandhi)

(via kharadar-mithadar)

This country needs to invest in women more.

beautifulindianbrides:

Hindu Wedding : Rakhi & Ravi

This one’s cute :))

I’m so obsessed with these wedding videos/photos, etc.

Sweater Vests and Why Republicans Hate Taxes