Want! It is apparently out of stock now--I mean, why wouldn't it be?--but I bet the elves are hard at work cranking out new ones at the Chinese North Pole as we speak.
This does not happen often--although I suppose the degree of frequency is entirely dependent on your perspective, vis-a-vis whether you're inside my head or a hapless bystander on the outside--but when it does it sucks. It's eerily reminiscent of the early '80s, specifically, nights on which I would get totally fucking stuck on my math homework, stuck to the point of swearing I could feel a physical barrier inside my brain that kept all the knowledge and capability that just had to be in there from spilling forward into an area where I could access it.
Today it is the same nice Hohokam site as yesterday, still sitting scattered in the database, resolutely flipping me off on every attempt I make to pull up a chair and be friendly, rebuffing my offers to buy it lunch or maybe just a drink, before it goes back to the Times crossword and its cup of decaf. I don't want a commitment or even a second date here. I just want to talk.
Specifically, I would like to know what people living there were doing round about the year 1000, why they made the tools they did, what all they had to give up to the people at West Branch in order to acquire some lousy brown and slightly radioactive chert the West Branchers were sitting on, and if there was any real reason behind the changes they made in their technological behaviors from generation to generation, or if they were just bored or all like fuck that shit, no way I'm doing this the way my old man did, and by the way, did you notice we have to make everything using these goddamn rocks? And you want how much, again, for that lousy-ass chert that makes me glow green at night? Because I can get it way cheaper in Nogales, you scamming bastard, and la migra can't do a goddamn thing about it because they don't fucking exist yet.
Uh, because I kinda need to know these things, and kinda need to write a report about them by... 5:00 today? In! Trouble!
The only possible way this could have been better is if it had been rendered in claymation by Nick Park, a la Chicken Run, with chubby turkey feet kicking in the hopper and the turkey worker giving Palin a giant toothy grin as the odd feather floats down into her hair and worried turkeys mill and mutter in the background. As it is, not bad. And here we were in the desert saying it hadn't felt much like the holidays yet! Who's hungry?
Also noted: yet again, Governor Palin makes specific individual references to her sons while blithely lumping her daughters as "the kids." Track's Stryker brigade is safe, or fairly safe, in Eye-rack, and Trig is happy and healthy. Oh, and school's going fine for the kids--perhaps her own girls, perhaps all of Alaska's children? Does she remember their names, or is she afraid of accidentally calling them Broomstick and Purple? Who knows.
This is the Bush reproductive healthcare legacy in action. Good luck with your adult lives, kids. And especially you, little girl.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) easily won a vote to remain chairman of a key committee today and will stay in the Democratic caucus despite his high-profile criticism of President-elect Barack Obama and his support of Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that "Joe Lieberman is a Democrat. He's part of this caucus."
Joe Lieberman is officially a ConnecticutForLiebermann-crat. If you've been busily blotting out your memories of the god-awful campaign season, like Harry Reid apparently has, Liebermann also stumped around the country for John McCain, whispered corrections into John McCain's ear, touted John McCain as the best hope for America, agreed that it really is a good question to ask if Barack Obama is a Marxist, and, oh, fretted out loud about the potential for America to be destroyed if Barack Obama, Democrat, were to be elected president. Joe Liebermann has also been a cheerleader for the Iraq war from Day One, and never hesitated to remind us that he believed John McCain has always been right on that account and Barack Obama has always been wrong.
In other words, Joe Liebermann has pretty much been functioning as a Republican in the Senate for a while now, so the Democratic leadership's worries about not having a 60-seat majority have been little more than insipid, poorly written theatre. Oh noes, they said, what if we offend Joe and he defects to the other side? News flash: he did that a while ago, propping up George Bush and talking shit about the Democratic presidential candidate to anyone who would listen. And your response to that is to say we need unity and all the Democrats we can find? Well, yeah, but this guy has not been interested in either unity or party discipline since Ned Lamont beat him in the CT Democratic primary way back when, so you need to aim a little higher when it comes to operationalizing your ideals and a little lower when it comes to giving somebody a much-needed kick in the ass out the door.
Obama seems to have wanted to keep that national security gavel in Joe's hands. Swell. Next!
This has been going on for two weeks now, and--amazingly--there has not been a single letter to the editor complaining about people shoving their bedroom behavior either in our faces or down our throats, whichever metaphor you prefer, in half-page stories in the Sunday paper that teh childrenz might get their hands on. Straight people do have the right to have relationships and draw up contracts (apparently even more than once if it doesn't work out the first or second or third time) but their constant need to parade their orientation to the rest of us is just so icky. Well, what else do you expect from the liberal Socialist media?
Good omens: Both Tiffani and Marc were married before
Because nothing is a better omen of future success than past failure. Go, straight people, go!
Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.● At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written, "Let's hope someone wins."
● Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray-painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
● Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted, "Assassinate Obama," a district official said.
● University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
● Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
● Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
● A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on Election Night by four white men who shouted, "Obama!"
● In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying, "Now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
Seriously? Seriously, what the fuck? "Let's hope somebody wins" a fucking assassination pool? I am at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to dealing with drooling mouthbreathers like this, much as I am at a disadvantage in dealing with anti-gay bigots, because I don't understand them, and by don't understand I mean I don't have the first fucking clue of how people can actually think this way in 2008. I'm not blind to their existence--that's not the part I'm having trouble conceptualizing--but I can't begin to wrap my brain around what it means to think that way about fellow human beings. Like to the point that you think the world is ending and hope that a man, a husband and father, will be murdered just because he's black and happens to hold the highest office in the country. I freely admit to having biases of my own--Mormons are tops on that list these days--but I don't wish death and destruction on them, and still manage to evaluate individual people as people first, with my main criteria being do you treat other people well and are you honest and reliable? Utter vitriol and hatred are things I reserve for individuals I know personally and for whom I have indisputable evidence of being shithead blackguards.
Hanging effigies? Burning crosses? Leaving boxes of shit on somebody's doorstep? Encouraging little kids to chant for a murder? All because... the black guy won. And/or you suspect the person you're targeting voted for the black guy for president. All across the fucking country.
Way to go, America. At least I'm not just fixated on the gay thing when I get depressed about the state of the nation now.
That last bullet: "...in order to win this battle, there may have to be certain legal rights recognized for unmarried people such as hospital visitation so opponents in the legislature will come away with something." In other words, in order to take the big important rights away from the faggots and dykes we might need to cave and let them see each other in the hospital, but Xenu knows that if we could get away with it, we'd eliminate that right too. Hospital fucking visitation. It's been my own personal whipping boy, the reductio ad hospitalum bandied about by people who might not reduce our relationships to a sex act but most definitely are happy to reduce the huge sphere of marital rights and responsibilities to the single issue of ICU access. And now we learn that it's the fucking shriveled little carrot the Mormons grudglingly consent to dangle in front of us even as they prepare to whack us with the stick.
Kiss my giant lesbian ass, Mormon church. You forfeited any claim on my civility when you decided to launch a crusade to strip me and mine of full citizenship in this country.
Connecticut voters could have opened the door to ending gay marriage last week by voting for a constitutional convention to amend the state's constitution, but the measure failed.Peter Wolfgang, the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, a gay-marriage opponent, acknowledged that banning gay weddings in Connecticut will be difficult but vowed not to give up. He condemned the high court's decision as undemocratic.
Peter, sweet cheeks? Do we need a refresher course on what democracy means? See that bit about people voting not to amend the constitution to prevent gay marriage? The judge's decision reflects the contents of that constitution, which the voters didn't want to change. And that is... constitutional democracy in action.
ORIGINAL POST: Thank you, Connecticut, and now you should probably steel yourselves for the inevitable onslaught from the rabid religious right. Many gay and lesbian couples are planning ceremonies Wednesday. The judge ruling followed a historic decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The high court ruled 4-3 on Oct. 10 that same-sex couples have the right to wed rather than accept a civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples. Yes. We. Can.Gay marriage is legal in Connecticut now that a judge has cleared the way. New Haven Superior Court Judge Jonathan Silbert ruled at a brief hearing Wednesday morning that gay and lesbian couples now may pick up marriage license forms at town and city clerks' offices statewide.
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights, saying the church and religious freedom could be under attack in the new administration.
"Religious freedom"has apparently been adopted as the new super!secret password for the fun new Catholic-Mormon clubhouse. After a busy Prop 102/Prop 8 season in which well-wishers reminded each other that squashing gay rights = religious freedom, I do not have the patience for this. Let's just run with the short version of the religious freedom argument, shall we? It goes like this: religious freedom means having the ability to force everyone to do things my way and my way only. Better yet, as very nicely written by someone whose name I have very unfortunately forgotten on one of the million blogs or blog comments I have read since election night, the even shorter version goes your continuing existence threatens my right to demand that you not exist.
Neither is a compelling argument.
Yes, the more complex version of the argument references healthcare workers who don't want to be forced to do the parts of their jobs that conflict with their personal consciences, or hospitals that don't want to extend the full spectrum of healthcare as a condition of receiving federal funding. The answer to that goes exactly this far: kiss my ass. If you do not wish to participate in abortion, get a job at a Catholic or other private hospital that pays their own way, or stay out of obstetrics. If you want your hospital to be eligible for federal funding, or if you want your practice to be able to apply for federal grants, suck it up and deal. If you want everyone who walks through your door to adhere to the precepts of your religion, whether they share that religion or not, slap a St. ______ sign over the door and be prepared to not have the best profit margin around. Or relocate your facility to Ave Maria, Florida, and hope that Tom Monaghan might bail you out.
Other people who can blow me this morning include the Daily Star letter-writer who admonished Sarah Palin for crossing her legs at the knees rather than the ankles whilst speaking to Hahmid Karzai, because the letter-writer has done some traveling and "knows how to behave, especially while in the presence of Muslim men." Really. Uh, Molly? Yeah, you can kiss my ass too, and so can the Muslim men whose delicate sensibilities need that kind of protecting.
Whew, it's shaping up to be a busy morning.
Friday night, while visiting relatives up in Fweenix, I seriously entertained the notion that I might die from a migraine. The only things that kept me from going to the ER were a complete physical inability to get off the couch, for fears that my left eyeball might shoot clear across the room if I moved, and the nonconstructive notion that 41 is a little too old to go waking up your mom in the middle of the night because you don't feel good.
So here it is Monday morning and I'm still in my soccer-ball pajamas, waiting for the blood vessels to decide to re-open or close or knot themselves off or whatever the fuck they need to do so that my head will stop trying to explode. Carry on.
Thank you very much to the commenters who've been talking me down since yesterday. Considering that this entire blog is pretty much one giant "Talk Me Down" segment, well, you've put in a yeoman's effort.
Rachel gets the last word, just because her hmmmm face is so freaking adorable and I need adorable just about now.
Thus far, 30 states have outlawed homosexual "marriages" by an average close to 70% approval by voters through amendments to the state constitutions. In addition, the voters in Arkansas yesterday approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. It will be the goal of Christian Coalition to ensure that the other 20 states adopt similar amendments banning homosexual "marriages" including the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut which also had two judicial decisions, by one vote margins, legalizing these abominations.
Because it's open season on people like me, and while others have patted our hands and said oh, your time will come or well, at least it only passed by five points this time instead of twenty like last time, the states are falling one by one. A coalition led by the Mormons and the Catholics poured over $74 million into supporting the California amendment. Now the self-titled "Christian" Coalition promises to throw itself not into feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless but denying full civil rights to... well, I was going to say to people like me. But they don't really see me that way. They want to deny full civil rights to abominations like me, and as Arizona has demonstrated, they will not stop until they succeed. If an amendment fails, they will tweak the language and bring it back for the next election and the next and the next until they find the right combination of legislators to get it out of committee and onto the ballot and the precise words that give straight voters the opportunity to smack down the gays with a clear conscience.
Go to any newspaper you want and read the online comments that follow stories about California or Arizona or Florida. See how many people are proud to proclaim their support for discrimination because of their religion, or because they're grossed out by the sex they're imagining, or because of their misapprehensions of history. See how many people were so eager to pass judgment and sentence on couples they do not know, who have not impacted their own lives a whit. See how many gleefully await the inevitable lawsuits only because they're certain the suits will fail and then they get to laugh at the gays losing all over again.
It's open fucking season on us. They don't care that the margin of victory was narrower this time. They only care that they've won, that they've continued to win, and that the stain of bigotry and discrimination will continue to march inexorably across the map.
Quick, what are these people celebrating?
What glad tidings have provoked such joyous, fists-in-the-air cheering? Did their candidate win the presidency? Or a senate seat? Did they just learn of a tax repeal that's going to save them some precious grocery money? Are they celebrating anything that directly impacts their own lives?
Or are they celebrating the passage of an amendment that just took away marriage rights from people who are different from them?
If you guessed the latter, you are, unfortunately, correct. Hey, from left to right, Bob Knoke, Amanda Stanfield, Jim Domen, and J.D. Gaddis? Fuck. You.
Wow. An electoral landslide and an electric rally in Chicago, and an acceptance speech that will be held as the gold standard for decades. The summing up of the speech via summing, through the eyes of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, the past century of America's responses to challenge, crisis, and injustice, was brilliant.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.
Yes we can.
The speech was a fitting bookend to John McCain's gracious and classy concession speech, which was itself a necessary prologue to Obama's words. McCain quickly shushed the crowd that booed in response to Obama's name, quickly and repeatedly and with growing exasperation until it sunk in and they went silent. Had he conducted his campaign with that level of dignity and measured reason, the outcome might well have been different. Let us hope that, with defeat, the straight-talking John McCain will re-emerge from the evangelical, uber-conservative-pandering pod person he turned into while on his presidential job interview, and will deliver on his promise to work with the new administration to fix the bushels of problems the country faces.
Obama called America to once again rise to the challenge, pitch in, sacrifice, work, and come together for a common good. That's not socialism, by the way, but simply the social contract required by a civilized society. We have been drowned out and shouted down by power-hungry ideologues for far too long. It's time to get to work.
My voting saga is short and sweet. I like to think I'm too rational for superstition, but after rolling out of bed I threw on my favorite t-shirt (Dropkick Murphys Boxing Club) and favorite thrift-store hiking shorts and favorite long-sleeved henley just to make sure. The line was barely poking out the door at the polling place, the poll workers were pleasant and efficient, nobody was grumpy, and I was out the door in under half an hour.
If you're one of the intrepid souls who waited five, six, eight hours to vote early on your day off, or will be doing so today, I salute you. The rest of my day is now free to decide on snacks for watching the returns.
When an MTV viewer wanted to know what Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama thought of Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment on the 2008 California general-election ballot that would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, MTV News brought the question straight to the man himself.
"I think it's unnecessary," Obama told Sway, in response to a question sent in by Gangstagigz from San Leandro, California. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them."
Wow. The tea dregs that have been sitting in the bottom of my cup for the past hour are less tepid than that. California Proposition 8 is going to come down the wire, and Arizona and Florida have their own rights-abridging amendments on the ballot, and Obama's statement that such things are... reprehensible? mean-spirited? un-American? Oh, "unnecessary," followed up by two disavowals of marriage equality in quick succession, packs all the wallop of a wet Twinkie. If anything, he just assuaged the consciences of people who will probably vote for him but can't quite overcome the ick factor and want to vote for constitutional discrimination at the same time.
He's not in favor of gay marriage. A hell of a lot of people in this country, even now, 41 years after Loving v. Virginia, are not in favor of the marriage his own parents however briefly entered. His own marriage would have been prohibited under the laws enacted by people who were "not in favor" of interracial unions. But the product and beneficiary of the last generation's fight for marriage equality, who grew up to be a fucking Constitutional scholar, sat there and unhesitatingly piled onto the very same line of thinking that technically kept his parents' marriage and his own marriage illegal in the state of Alabama until just eight years ago, and advocated separate-but-equal status for me.
Almost as maddening as having my entire existence reduced to a sex act is having my desire for equal legal standing for my relationship reduced to the issue of hospital visitation and property inheritance. Yes, those are two very nice things to have. However, that still leaves roughly 1,037 other rights that are federally extended to straight couples missing from my portfolio. Of course politicians who want to weasel out of fully supporting Teh Gay kowtow to ICU visitation. Because as long as they "fight" for our right to bring flowers to each other, they can pat themselves on the back and forget about all the rest.
After Inauguration Day we'll find out who he has actually been pandering to here--the "Christians" who can't stomach the thought of my relationship having the same legal standing as their own, or the gays who have grudgingly accepted hearing their relationships devalued time and again as a political tactic just to get their guy into the White House, because, you know, it works every time.
I would simply like to hear Barack Obama say that my marriage is equivalent to his own, and that all Americans are equally endowed with rights. I do not want to think about how long I will be waiting.
