The Jokes Write Themselves

Arizona may be the single best state to be blogging from these days, as its legislature is the gift that just keeps on giving. The newest proposed attempt to annoy the citizenry--amazingly enough, aimed at straight people this time--comes from perennial all-star Rep. Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix), who wants to require people to be super duper double dog secret squirrel sure they want to be divorced before they can, well, finalize things and move on with their lives.

State lawmakers are moving to make couples who have decided their marriage isn't working wait four months longer to divorce.

And those with children would first have to go through education programs telling them about alternatives to divorce and the resources available to improve or strengthen their marriages.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, the sponsor of HB 2650, said she believes requiring couples to wait 180 days will result in more people deciding they actually should stay together.

And, surprise surprise, the driving force behind this one is the Center for Arizona Policy, a group that has been a chronic burr under the saddle of gay, liberal, progressive, inclusive, non-racist, and other reality-based factions in the state for some time. One the one hand, it's gratifying to see them taking baby steps toward the logical conclusion their perpetual sanctity-of-marriage must lead to (banning divorce); it's always nice when hypocrisy of any stripe gets dialed down a notch. It's also inevitable, however, that this must go hand in hand with some unintended consequences, such as imposing undue hardships on people whose marriages are abusive or simply over.

Colleen McNally, the presiding family court judge for Maricopa County, warned that stretching out the process actually could be dangerous. She said domestic-violence attacks actually increase the moment a spouse tries to get out of an abusive marriage.

Barto said she is willing to alter her measure when it goes to the full House to keep the waiting period at 60 days for domestic-violence victims. But foes said that still doesn't answer the question of why the state should be prolonging decisions that may have been mutually agreed on by couples.

So, just to review the past 48 hours in Arizona, we have (1) one legislator who believes adults don't have the right to consume alcohol if they're receiving any form of government assistance, and now (2) another who believes adults don't have the right to quickly end a legal arrangement they both agree isn't working out for them. And if you want to go back a full 72 hours, (3) yet another state representative thinks voters shouldn't be allowed to choose their U.S. Senate candidates in primaries, but should leave the nominating process to the brainiacs in Phoenix who brought you nos. (1) and (2) above.

Coming from Illinois, this level of hackery is almost cute in a toddler sort of way--I mean, no money, patronage, or Senate seats are changing hands--but still, I gotta live here. When Jon Kyl and John McCain have gravitas in comparison to the minor leagues, there's a problem.

Frank Antenori's Interesting Approach to Cost Containment

The state of Arizona is pretty well broke. The feds are pretty well broke. Intrepid Arizona state legislator Frank Antenori (R-Southern Arizona But Not Tucson Fer Crissakes) decided to tackle part of the problem by introducing legislation limiting the kinds of products and services people on public assistance are allowed to buy. No alcohol, no cigarettes. Not a surprise, right, since you can't buy those things with food stamps anyway? Mmm, Frank would like to push it a titch further. It's not simply a matter of what products are food-stamp (or, more accurately, Electronic Benefit Transfer card)- eligible. It's what people on assistance can purchase, period, whether it's on their EBT or with cash, and what happens to them if they break the rules.

While welfare recipients would not be able to buy alcohol and tobacco products, they could acquire other items that are not a necessity - up to a point. His proposal would allow assistance beneficiaries to buy a vehicle worth no more than $5,000 or a television, as long as it doesn't cost more than $300.

That's no alcohol or tobacco, period, no matter how you pay for it. No cell phones, either, unless you don't have a landline, and basic cable only. And--hang on, this is the best part--should the bill become law, until the legislature figures out an enforcement mechanism, it primarily hinges on the most reliable compliance system known to humanity: ratting somebody out.

But until the law gets some legal teeth, Antenori said he foresees a system in which people report those they see at the grocery store using food stamps and then pulling out cash for that bottle of wine or pack of smokes.

"People put $100 of food up on the register, run the EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer card) through, and then throw two big jugs of booze and two cartons of cigarettes (onto the conveyor belt) and pull $100 out of their pocket. If you see that, you call a 1-800 number and notify somebody," Antenori said.

Awesome. No potential for abuse there! None!

The larger problem here is that Antenori is, quite simply, attempting to legislate morality from a position of unexamined privilege, reducing a problem that comes in a dog's-eye-view rainbow of gray to overly simplified black and white, complete with draconian penalties.

That would mean a single bottle of beer could cost a family its food stamps, free health care and any other welfare benefits. Antenori said he has no problem with that.

"If you don't have enough money to buy your own food to exist for your own sustenance, and you need some other hardworking taxpayer that's out there and working and paying taxes to subsidize your food, then you shouldn't have the luxury, at the expense of some other taxpayer, to go out and enjoy the niceties in life," he said.

Frank's indignation at "two big jugs of booze" being rung up for cash mean a bottle of cheap red wine will cost you your healthcare, and that's really going to bite you in the ass when the big jugs of syrupy juice drink and cases of salt-soaked ramen he is happy to subsidize contribute to you developing diabetes and hypertension. I do understand what he's trying to accomplish; if you're on government assistance, yeah, it would be a really good idea to prioritize your cash spending and limit it to things you and your family absolutely need to survive, and cigarettes are never on that list (although processed flour and corn syrup are a-ok). If your budgeting skills suck to the extent that you're blowing your extra cash on a 50" plasma TV and Chivas by the quart, well, I don't see you moving into an actual tax bracket anytime soon, and maybe that's its own punishment. But does accepting food stamps mean you surrender your agency as an adult, so long as your craptastic decision-making stays on the legal side of the line? In Frank Antenori's world, yeah, you do. And Frank gets to decide what you need and don't need, apparently based on rather Monopoly-esque notions of luxury and Marie Antionettish notions of how people should solve any problems this law might cause them.

Antenori said he had not considered whether there should be programs to help those on public assistance quit smoking so they don't lose their benefits. But he said he's not sure they're necessary, adding that people could just quit.

And you know, if they don't want the welfare restrictions, they could just get off welfare. And if they want a beer, they're gonna to be off welfare soon enough anyway, AMIRITE? As long as the good people of Arizona do their jobs and call the 800 number, that is. Not another peep from any of the twelve co-sponsors of this bill decrying the nanny state, 'k?

Edited to add: The bill includes a provision that is sheer morality-legislating, which I did not notice before:

A person shall not receive assistance or cash assistance under this title if the person is found:

1. in possession of, consuming or purchasing alcoholic beverages, tobacco products or illegal drugs.

So merely drinking a beer bought for you by a buddy will get your kids kicked off AHCCCS. This has absolutely nothing to do with people misusing taxpayer dollars, and the argument that it simply keeps people from lying to 1-800-ANTENORI that hey man, it's not mine, it's my friend's is the equivalent of making the entire team run sprints for an hour because one guy's fucking around. Career welfare sucks for society, but this isn't the way to end it. It's not even enforceable. You either grant people some level of funding and accept that some of them are going to piss their last dime away on booze and other things you don't like, or you take complete control of their subsistence behaviors and deliver a box of approved food to the debtor's jail once a week, and the latter isn't going to wash in a free society. Educate people and make quality subsistence both affordable and accessible. But selectively applying 24-hour blue laws to them because you think they're all lazy bastards while you go home to Oro Valley smacks far less of proaction and far more of punitive legislation.

Never Mind Who Dat, What the Fuck Dat?

Damn, what a call--opening the second half with an onside kick? The Saints converted that bit of ballsiness into a touchdown, grabbed the momentum, and 30 minutes and several clutch plays later, grabbed the Lombardi Trophy. And, as my friend India pointed out, felt no need for Jesus shout-outs in the postgame interviews.

That was the good. The bad? The breathtaking misogyny in the commercials. Forget Tim Tebow and his mom; against the baseline set by GoDaddy.com, FloTV, and Bridgestone, Focus on the Family rated a giant meh. What knocked the Tebows completely off my radar? Oh look, here's Danica Patrick abandoning her last shred of dignity and getting into a strip-off, with the promise of additional unrated web content. Ah, here's Jim Nance saying that a guy who goes shopping with his girlfriend has lost his spine! Oh, here's a guy who gets conceived, grows up, gets a job, gets married, and sires a kid of his own--whew, he deserves a break after all that! And here's a guy who abandons his wife to a Road Warrior gang rather than give up his tires! Oh, look, men strike back! Because they're been so grievously put upon for the past couple of decades out of the last 160,000 years of anatomically modern human history!

Fuck. Oh, want to see them? Here.

In happier news, chocolate Chex + rice Chex + chocolate Cheerios + pretzel sticks + mini marshmallows + mini chocolate chips + butter + vanilla + NUTELLA = OMFG awesome snackies. Also, roasting thinly sliced cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary results in some stunning crunchy/tender bits of FUCK YES CAULIFLOWER IS GOOD. Who knew? My mom always boiled it to death. I would have eaten a lot more of it without complaining if she'd roasted it instead.

Offerred Without Comment

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

The Week in Sports

The WPS LA Sol fire sale Dispersal Draft took place yesterday. Oddly, despite usually sending out more Tweets per fan than any other professional sports league, the Twitterfeed was silent until it was all over, leaving dozens of people biting their nails wondering where Marta would land. She wound up going third, to the apparently named by an AYSO U-14 girls team that won the lottery Gold Pride, newly of the East Bay. Former Notre Dame and current women's national team stalwart holding midfielder Shannon Boxx was the first pick, going to St. Louis, which totally cleaned up by also adding Aya Miyama and Tina DiMartino; red hot Candian keeper Karina LeBlanc went to Philadelphia. My hometown Red Stars passed on veteran players, grabbing rookie Tarheel Casey Nogueira with pick #4, and with that decision hopefully both saved a lot of cash and (potentially) increased their anemic scoring output by a factor of maybe four. Of course, without Tarpley in the midfield any more, that's a lot of reliance on Megan Rapinoe's ability to remember she can pass the ball now instead of having to do it all on her own.

In baseball news, Big Z showed up early (!) to spring training, with a shiny new good attitude and svelte physique, both of which should asplode right on schedule the first time he walks three guys in a row and blows a two-run lead, which we'll peg at 'round about April 8.

And in other baseball news, this.

Admiral Mike Mullen. For. The. Win.

No additional comments from my end are necessary. Oh, except that John McCain is an awful, awful man.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BOTL: Now with More Tebow, More Abstinence, More Kerfuffle

A laundry list of items, and the sun isn't even up yet.

The Daily Star ran an editorial the New York Times flung out on Sunday, which I missed at the time.

A letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial "uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk" - a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.

The would-be censors are on the wrong track.

Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

The editorial notes that the Tebows' story is being brought to you by Focus on the Family, but conveniently omits the fact that FoF works tirelessly--with nearly bottomless funding from their adherents--to increasingly restrict women's rights to make choices about their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the choice of abortion altogether, as well as eliminating many forms of contraception as well. Pam Tebow ostensibly had a choice (although abortion for any reason has been illegal since 1930 in the Phillippines, where Tim was born, it's questionable whether she actually had the choice she claims to have made), and she's shilling the story of that choice on behalf of an organization that is committed to removing the same choice from other women. Nice job on nuance, NYT and Daily Star!

Next up, abstinence!

A new study shows for the first time that a sex-education class emphasizing abstinence only - ignoring moral implications of sexual activity - can reduce sexual activity by nearly a third in 12- and 13-year-olds compared with students who received no sex education.

"This study, in our view, is game-changing science," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.

"It provides for the first time evidence that abstinence-only intervention helped young teens delay sexual activity."

The study reported here covered 600+ low-income African-American 12- and 13-year-olds in the Northeast, who were split into four groups who received different eight hour courses in 8th grade. The control group got generic healthy living, the first test group got abstinence-only, the second safe sex (excluding abstinence), and the third got a combination of safe sex and abstinence. Over the following two years, half the safe-sex kids reported sexual activity, while only a third of the abstinence-only kids did; the comprehensive group was in the middle.

Okay, so abstinence-only education was tops at keeping 12- and 13-year-olds from having sex before they turned 14 or 15. Fair enough. But is there a kicker?

None of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. The children thus remained at risk of pregnancy and venereal disease.

About 8.8 percent of participants in the comprehensive class reported activity with multiple partners, compared with 14.1 percent in the control group, indicating that the comprehensive class reduced the risk of disease. Neither diseases nor pregnancies were monitored, however.

Ding ding ding! Maybe abstinence should be hammered at the younger kids--this study certainly suggests it's an effective tactic--but I have to ask if 55 kids (33% of the control group) having sex at 14 with no understanding of contraception is really a preferable outcome to 86 kids having sex at 14 after at least having been taught about condoms. The difference is statistically significant, but in terms of actual lives, 55 and 86 are pretty much a wash. If anything, the study does make it horribly clear that a huge unresolved problem is how to convince kids to use the goddamn condoms and other contraception once they've learned about them. Too bad disease and pregnancy were not monitored; since those are the two conditions abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed agree need to be minimized, those are the outcomes that would seem to be the most salient.

Oh, and on the teeny tiny kerfuffle of the NYT gays-aren't-monogamous story? A few commenters elsewhere have read my objections as being objections to open relationships and rational thinking about partnering, and possibly to gay men as well. No, no, no. Got no problem with people negotiating relationship parameters that work for them, and am not unaware of the high incidence of infidelity in hetero marriages and the problems that causes when couples don't write external affairs into their rules but go on to have them anyway. Nor do I think all gay partnerships must hew to the mythological Ozzie-and-Harriet model in order for us to have a chance at marriage equality; what works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. I just despair when I see glosses reported as science, particularly when I know exactly the kinds of bozos in my own state and possibly own family who will pounce on the pronouncement that half of all gay relationships incorporate non-monogamy and use it as the only justification they will ever need to keep voting against full civil rights for us and to keep throwing money at organizations that think we should all be executed, or jailed, or maybe just subjected to compulsory reparative therapy.

Blah.

Blah. That is all.

This Is Not Helping

Oh, for fuck's sake.

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.

Some key words/phrases here may be "male" and "Bay Area." But hey, NYT, don't let the fact that the dataset was drawn from male couples keep you from glossing the sample as "gay men and lesbians," and really, don't let "Bay Area" keep you from leading with the straight-from-Focus-on-the-Family-playbook assertion that monogamy just isn't in the cards for many gay couples across the board. And please don't go in depth about the percentage of hetero marriages that feature cheating by one spouse or the other, but do showcase one straight open-married couple as an illustration of how gay marriage may serve to spearhead a total revamping of all marriage with the innovation of everyone fucking other people--within the rules, of course.

“The combination of freedom and mutual understanding can foster a unique level of trust,” Mr. Quirk, of Oakland, said.

“The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight,” he said, citing the fresh perspective gay couples bring to matrimony. “If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages.”

Open relationships are not exclusively a gay domain, of course. Deb and Marius are heterosexual, live in the East Bay and have an open marriage. She belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and maintained her virginity until her wedding day at 34. But a few years later, when the relationship sputtered, both she and her husband, who does not belong to the church, began liaisons with others.

Fuck. Seriously? This is yet another example of why science--even lowly social science--shouldn't be reported by newspapers. Because Prop 8 types will blow right through the details of the study sample and the inclusion of anecdotes from a completely different population than that dealt with in the study and say see, just like we always told you: homos can't keep it in their pants, lesbians either probably, not that we're keeping score, and they're going to change marriage to mean we all have to let our wives fuck somebody else. Phenomenal stuff, that, with impeccable timing as Perry v. Schwarzenegger heads into closing arguments.

Not a Good Sign for Women's Pro Soccer

Last year's WPS regular-season champion LA Sol went tits-up 45 minutes ago, after last-gasp attempts to secure an investor fizzled. The 19 players on the roster will be up for grabs in a special draft for the remaining eight teams in the league a week from today, making it the first time in the history of forever that the planet's Player of the Year for four consecutive years (!) in any sport will be shunted into an expansion draft mere months after collecting her most recent trophy.

The Marta Fire Sale may be complicated somewhat by league rules limiting the number of international players on each roster; under current rules only St. Louis, Boston, and Washington have spots available, and of these three, Boston is up first in the first round, with Washington next. Which means Washington snap up Johanna Frisk and then take their pick of the non-Marta Boston roster. You heard it here first. I'll wait for Jordy to weigh in on who she wouldn't mind seeing head south if it means watching Marta team up with Kelly Smith on a week-to-week basis.

In other women's soccer news, I am watching the semifinals of the CONCACAF U-20 women's tournament and thinking nobody on these nations' senior national teams need to be watching their backs anytime soon. US-Costa Rica in particular has been bad touch-bad touch-foul for the entire first half.

And I do hope the remaining teams have their shit more in order than LA did.

Super Bowl Fun!

Tim Tebow is going to be on TV on Super Bowl Sunday, which will likely be his last Super Bowl-related appearance unless he does something about the lisp and lands in a TV booth someday. No, he's not playing on the field--the draft isn't until April--but he'll be playing the missionary role that's become such a big part of the mythos that has been built up around the kid by people who are into that convert-the-natives sort of thing. Tebow will be appearing, with his mother, in an anti-choice advertisement produced by Focus on the Family.

... he's an unabashed pro-life supporter; his mother, Pam, was advised by her doctor late in Tebow's pregnancy to abort the baby because it was a dangerous pregnancy. Her refusal led to Tebow's compelling life -- and also to a 30-second Super Bowl commercial by Tebow and Pam (sponsored by Focus on the Family) that will add to Tebow-mania.

In the interest of fairness, I won't put words in the boy's mouth. This is what he said about why he's doing the commercial:

Pro-life is very important to me. My mother listened to God late in her pregnancy, and if she had listened to others and terminated me, obviously I wouldn't be here. If others don't have the same belief, it's OK. I understand. But I hope they respect that at least I have the courage to stand up for what I believe in.

Okay. Timmy, maybe you understand--and possibly even respect--that other people have sincerely held opinions on this that differ from your own. But if you're really approaching this with the live-and-let-live attitude your quote appears to be trying to portray--and if you are as cognizant of the "choice" element in "choose life" as you should be, given the personal history you're flogging here--you should know better than to do your witnessing for full-term pregnancy under the banner of James Dobson, who most assuredly doesn't think "it's OK" that other people don't have the same belief. Because, if you hadn't noticed, Focus on the Family spends an inordinate amount of time and money working to make sure that no American woman has a choice to exercise about pregnancy ever again. Otherwise, you're pulling a Palin and repeatedly referencing a choice that was made by a woman to insist that women should not be allowed to make choices. Encourage women to make the same choice your mom did? Mmm, considering she went against medical advice and endangered her own life and the well-being of the four kids she already had, I'm not sure that's the best thing to be encouraging, but hey, I'm all about free choice under informed consent, so go for it. Lend your face and boner-prompting among the evangelical set to an organization that will use your image to further their attempt to eliminate reproductive freedom? Shove that shizz up your ass, sideways.

Related issues include CBS' decision to approve airtime for this, when they've refused politically/cultural war-ly charged ads in the past (notably, the 2004 UCC spots supporting marriage equality), as well as the just plain tackiness of letting politics/culture wars intrude on what is supposed to be the one national holiday we can all agree on, goddammit.

By the by, Tebow is fond of referencing Bible verses on his eyeblack. I'm sure the fact that he's never put MATT 6:5-6 under his eyes is just an oversight.

Winter Weather Wonderland

I have no photos, but I wish I had thought to get a screengrab of the Weather Channel last night, which showed southern Arizona experiencing a (1) high wind warning, (2) severe thunderstorm warning, (3) winter storm warning, (4) BLIZZARD warning, for fuck's sake, and (5) tornado watch. All at the same time. The warnings crawled in red across the bottom of the screen to alarm beep triplets, the wind outside howled and thrashed the trees. This morning it's still raining here in the valley and the mountains appear to be getting thrashed by some kind of large, snowy weather. When I got to work the doves were perched in a ruffled line along the fence, beaks tucked under wings, and a coyote alternately admired himself in a puddle and pointed his nose up to yip into the damp, cold air. It's a day for boots and sweaters and hot soup in the desert.

Well Well Well.

Considering the amount of crap that has been spewed by Arizona's various representative delegations in the past week, this came as a pleasant surprise.

Cindy McCain, the wife of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and their daughter Meghan have posed for photos endorsing pro-gay marriage forces in California.

Mrs. McCain appears with silver duct tape across her mouth and "NOH8" written on one cheek in a photo posted Wednesday to the Web site of NOH8, a gay rights group opposed to Proposition 8. The ballot measure passed by California voters in 2008 bans same-sex marriage.

Cindy McCain contacted NOH8 and offered to pose for the photo endorsement, the Web site said.

That must have made for some fascinating dinnertime conversation in Chez McCain. I wonder if any of their china is left intact. It's almost enough to make me give Cindy a pass for her "the only way to get around Arizona is by small private plane" comment during the campaign. In fact, yes. We have no roads in Arizona. Pass granted!

See, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

"The people of Massachusetts have spoken. We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate and will move to seat him as soon as the proper paperwork has been received," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

And with that final formality performed in fine lapdog fashion, the 60-seat supermajority evaporated and the progressive express train was derailed and... well, and Senate Democrats breathed a deep sigh of relief at not having to deal with this unfamiliar and uncomfortable thing called "power" any more, not that they ever really had much to begin with, considering the Blue Dogs' first inclination after the 2008 election was to see which one could out-Republican the others and Blanche Lincoln and Olympia Dukakis inexplicably became the most important people in the biggest Democratic-majority Senate the country had seen since before "Democrat" took on its modern connotations of social justice, civil rights, and lip service to the same before promptly rolling over to the whims of a minority party that wisely decided to stop acting like it ever lost power in the first place.

And a former nekkid centerfold with a pickup truck and a taste for tax cuts but not so much for the unprivileged classes slid into Ted Kennedy's seat nuts-first and the Dems wonder how this ever could have happened and we can kiss what was left of healthcare reform goodbye.

Never mind that healthcare "reform" in its current state probably isn't worth passing anyway. The teabaggers will crow that this special election in Massachusetts is a bellwether, the first tolling of the death knell for the administration's agenda. Never mind that said agenda barely rises above the status of business as usual; the important thing is that said business as usual was dressed up in a progressive Obama t-shirt trimmed with hopey lace and topped with change sauce, and that image is what took a resounding smack to the gob yesterday. And just like Jesus said, Harry Reid brushed himself off and smiled and politely held the door open for the guy.

Good job, Martha Coakley! Excellent work, DSCC! On the upside, now that everyone and their dog says this means Obama's a one-termer, does this mean he'll get busy on some of those campaign promises that were just too toxic to touch before being re-elected?

The Year in Review

New Year's Day: very nice.

First full week of January: wretched tooth pain.

Second week of January: offending tooth drilled into oblivion; temporary crown installed; excruciating tooth and jaw pain.

Third week of January: emergency root canal; total bill for dental adventures $2100.

Rest of 2010, never mind rest of January: you are on fucking notice.

Frank Antenori Rides Again.

Commenter Melissa asked for my opinion on Arizona House Bill 2148, a proposed revision of the state's adoption regulations from this:

Any adult resident of this state, whether married, unmarried or legally separated, is eligible to qualify to adopt children. A husband and wife may jointly adopt children.

to this:

A. Any adult resident of this state, whether married, unmarried or legally separated, is eligible to qualify to adopt children. A husband and wife may jointly adopt children.

B. Pursuant to rules adopted by the division, the division or an agency shall place a child who is in the custody of the state and who has a case plan goal of adoption with any person who is certified by the court as acceptable to adopt children. The division or agency must give primary consideration to placement with a married couple and may consider placement with a single person only if a qualified married couple is not available, unless any of the following applies:
1. The single person is a legal relative of the child.
2. The alternative for the child is extended foster care.
3. A meaningful and healthy relationship between the single person and the child has already been established.
4. The child's best interests require the adoption by the single person.
5. The adoption is the result of a direct placement adoption.

Among the sponsors are our old friend Frank Antenori (R-Not Tucson), who favors protecting women's delicate constitutions from difficult things like decision-making and thinking and stuff, and yesterday's rockstar of the day, Judy Burges (R-an intersection west of Prescott), who thinks Obama is a secret muslin foreigner. I have not been able to locate any comments by these two or any of the several other all-Republican sponsors, and I am very interested in what they will have to say.

Exceptions 2 and 4 listed above (alternative is extended foster care/adoption by the single person is in the best interest of the child) would seem to leave a sufficient amount of leeway for single people or unmarried couples (read: gay) to argue that they shouldn't be sent to the back of the line for a specific child, although if that's the case I wonder why Antenori and company inserted them in the first place. Well, unless the main point of this exercise is to jab a pointy stick in teh gays' eyes just because they can, and I suppose that should never be ruled out where the Arizona statehouse is concerned.

However, if you're an unmarried single or partnered person who knows you want to adopt, but aren't personally acquainted with a child who needs adopting and who you can leverage the exceptions for, it sounds like you're screwed until all the prospective straight married people who suddenly line-jumped you have been eliminated for one reason or another. In that case, your best bet appears to be requesting a special-needs child, since this will bump you up to official second-class status from what will be bottom-of-the-barrel status.

B. The division is not required to accept every application for certification. In determining which applications to accept the division may give priority to applications filed jointly by a husband and wife who are adult residents of this state and who wish to adopt a child who has any special needs as defined in section 8-141 and secondary priority to single adult residents of this state who wish to adopt a child who has any special needs as defined in section 8‑141.

The evaluation process remains unchanged from its current structure, which oddly--to me, anyway--specifically spells out that the moral and religious characters of the prospective parents are to be evaluated by the state before stamping an application as a go or a no go. More on how this plays out when once it starts playing.

Another Very Good Option

Doctors Without Borders got their asses kicked by the earthquake too; if you're in a donating mood, shoot them ten bucks or fifty.

Haiti

The right way to respond to the earthquake in Haiti:

12:30am (1/13/2010) You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.

6:20 pm The American Red Cross is pledging an initial $200,000 to assist communities impacted by this earthquake, and is prepared to take further action as local responders assess the situation. As with most earthquakes, we expect to see immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support.

The American Red Cross is accepting donations through our International Response Fund.

The absolute wrong way to respond to the earthquake in Haiti (fast forward to 6:00):

If you don't want to cede 60 seconds of your life to Pat Robertson--completely understandable!--the short version is Haitians swore a pact to the devil so that's why they keep getting their asses kicked by natural disasters. Seriously, Pat, STFU already.

Note 1: Video from Pam's House Blend.

Note 2: Verizon apparently isn't participating in the Red Cross' texting donations campaign--thanks, Verizon--but you can still go online to make a donation to the International Response Fund, and possibly drop some coins into several of the other buckets they have set up for your local chapter and deployed military while you're there.

Arizona Yet Again Fails to Disappoint

And here we go again. Rockstar Arizona state representative of the day (we don't say du jour in these parts) is Judy Burges (R-Skull Valley), who earned her tally mark in the GOP locker room in Phoenix by preparing legislation requiring presidential and vice presidential candidates to prove their natural-born US citizenship before they'll be allowed on the ballot in our fair state. In fact, they'll have to double secret probation downward dog prove it, which should make the AZ secretary of state just thrilled about his job.

The kind of certification Burges wants, though, could be more difficult than simply checking for a valid birth certificate, as the arguments about his legal qualification go beyond whether he was actually born in Hawaii.

A lawsuit filed in federal court in Pennsylvania charges, among other things, Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian man and moved there, and he failed to reclaim it as an adult. But Judge Barclay Surrick threw out the case without ruling on the issue, saying the plaintiff did not have standing to sue.

Oh, in case you need to ask? This is about the integrity of the electoral process. It isn't about Obama.

Burges said the measure is not necessarily about Obama, though she admitted she doubts he was born in Hawaii as he claims or that he can show he is a U.S. citizen.

No, honest, it's not about Obama, necessarily.

Still, she acknowledges she is not an Obama fan.

"When someone bows to the king of Saudi Arabia and they apologize for our country around the world, I have a problem with that," she said.

Totally not about Obama!

The two-term lawmaker said her concerns remain about having a president whose citizenship — and, as she sees it, loyalty — is not clear.

"We want to make sure that we have candidates that are going to stand up for the United States of America," Burges said.

Clearly not about Obama in any way at all!

Got anything else for us, Judy?

"Obama has a book, and it said, when it came down to it, he would be on the Muslim side," Burges continued. "Doesn't that bother you just a little bit?"

What bothers me, actually, is legislators--even of the state-level Republican variety--functioning as human equivalents of forwarded e-mails from right-wing relatives. What Burges just told us right there is that she didn't read the book herself, but knows somebody somewhere this one time said Obama has this book saying he loves Muslims and hates America. She probably isn't sure which of Obama's two best-sellers contains this information, although when it comes down to it, they both probably do, so it doesn't really matter.

The quote comes from Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," where he writes about conversations with immigrant communities following the 2001 terrorist attacks, especially Arab and Pakistani Americans. Obama said they were fearful over detentions and FBI questioning and were concerned about the historical precedent.

"They need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction," Obama wrote.

It remains unclear, then, why Burges chose the comparatively more difficult route of writing legislation and hustling votes when she could have just busted out the markers and posterboard for some where's the birth certificate or, better yet, Obama secret muslin signs. Maybe she thought her bill would be a more subtle approach, assuming this is what passes for subtlety in Skull Valley.

An ugly direction indeed. Hey, Arizona statehouse Republicans: can we at least see a little more originality out of you lot next time around? Even Glenn Beck will think you're nuts on this one, and that is just never a good sign.

I Will Need a Second DVR for This

In honor of former half-governor Palin's upcoming gig:




















I cannot wait.

In Which Rush Gives Us Clarity

Wow. I had no idea healthcare in Hawaii is so affordable, and offered on understanding installment plans! Rushbo counts himself among the uninsured in America, and helpfully tells us all why we should all strive to be uninsured. Because if he can pay for two days of inpatient testing, why, anyone can!

Limbaugh made the argument that healthcare is actually cheap, "You hear here that multimillionaire, only Limbaugh could afford it, that's such a misrepresentation of the truth. I'll just tell you if you can afford a car, you can afford what I did in the hospital. If you can afford a pretty expansive media room, you can afford what I spent in the hospital, and with all the tests and everything else. If you can afford an SUV, could have gone to the hospital 3 or 4 times for what I, it's just a matter of choice, what you want to budget for and pay for, Rush we got to have a car to get to work, and we got to have a house, yeah but everybody says they got to have healthcare too. The people don't prioritize it the way they do other things."

Well now. It seems I can afford a hospital stay like Rush's, because it would work out to the price of my "expansive media room" (2-year-old flatscreen from Sears, just recently paid off at $100 a month) and my car ($266/month for the past two years, with three to go). Oh. Wait. Maybe when he said "afford a car" he didn't mean the lowest monthly payment you could wring out of Toyota Financial after scraping together a down payment from friends and having a stellar credit score only because you've never been able to afford purchases major enough to default on. Maybe he meant paying cash for a new car, which in Rushland probably doesn't mean a used pickup or a new economy hatchback, since he keeps six or so rides in his garage that each push the half-million dollar sticker price. And since I have yet to hear of a two-day inpatient excursion at the level Rush enjoyed coming in at under the sticker price of my Matrix--and since I have an operating brain that is connected to reality--I have to go with the "paying $450,000 cash" possibility.

Let them eat cake and jaw-dropping unexamined privilege don't even begin to scratch the surface here. And the saddest part is that legions of Rush's barely-scraping-by listeners just sat back and said you tell 'em, Rush.

Today in Self-improvement

And to think I used to while away the hours listening to old Ellen clips on the YouTube whilst coding artifacts. News flash: the drudgery portion of my job, which involves measuring and recording various attributes of the waste flakes produced when prehistoric people whacked rocks together to make either (1) tools or (2) a big mess, can essentially be performed by a well-trained baboon. Not much of a drain on the cerebral resources, that. So I load up a playlist with Ellen, which inexplicably boosts my productivity by about 25%, or Eddie Izzard, or Arrested Development, and measure and weigh and tippy-tap the keypad and life is good, if simple.

Then I discovered iTunesU a few days after Christmas. Seriously! You can go to iTunes and listen to audio or watch video of college-level lectures on many different subjects. Granted, some of it is Open University woo (Chemistry is Awesome), but they also have stuff from MIT (Chemistry 5111: Organic), so I'm busily plugging holes in my knowledge base while simultaneously registering complete flake-rhyolite-25.11 mm-.87 g-wheee. All for free.

Then when s-orbits and p-orbits and carbon bonds refuse to anchor in my brain, I just listen to this and feel much better:

A Word on the Rose Parade

Well, not a word on the Rose Parade so much as the completely predictable exercise in re-framing the selection of Chesley Sullenberger as Grand Marshall afforded too many people in Pasadena who found themselves adjacent to reporters' voice recorders. No one can argue that Sully is a genuine hero, or that we would all gladly pay a $200 bag surcharge for the rest of forever if it would guarantee him being the pilot on our jaunts from Tucson to O'Hare. But that's not enough for an increasingly Palinized public whose highest accolade for the giants among us is that they're actually of average stature, and possibly midgets.

Sullenberger was chosen to embody the theme of the 2010 parade, "A Cut Above the Rest."

No one could disagree that he fit the bill perfectly, parade-goer Jessica Osterman said.

"It's good that they're going back to the roots and picking an average person," said Osterman, 28.

For Terri Rubio, 58, the selection of Sullenberger was an inspiration.

"He's not out to sell himself as a celebrity," she said. "He's a common person who's sticking to his values."

Jessica and Terri are apparently unaware that "A Cut Above the Rest" generally != "average person." Because Sullenberger is not a common person. He's a highly trained, well-educated professional who also stays on the cutting edge of safety procedures and crisis response research. In other words, he's pretty fucking elite--and in more other words, he's exactly the kind of person you want flying your airplane. The average guy, whether he "sticks to his values" or not--whatever the fuck that means in the context of landing a jet in a river--is not.

While it didn't come up in the Rose Parade quotes I read, I sense it simmering right under the surface, so I'd also like to remind these folks that, unlike the average Joe who might find suddenly himself in the pilot's seat when the engines go flat, Sullenberger stayed on task and focused on his training rather than taking a moment to bow his head.

Interviewer Katie Couric asked exactly the kind of what-exactly-happened, what-did-you-think-then questions that drew colorful details from the captain, a very succinct and focused man. But one question jumped out from the others: "Did you, at any point, pray?"

It seemed to be the only question that surprised Sullenberger, who had taken his plane from a normal take-off through a disasterous bird-strike that killed both engines to ditching in a frigid river in less than five minutes. His answer:

I would imagine somebody in the back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane.

There's been more than enough remaking gods and heroes in our own image over the last nine years or so. Let the man be a hero without dragging him down to your own level.

2010, Post the First

I had to think for a minute about what the date is today, and then count forward and backward a few times to figure out which day of the week we're dealing with here. Apparently it is Saturday, which after a Friday that felt like a Sunday creates more confusion than I can deal with after only one cup of coffee.

People a few blocks away from here spell out messages in the rocks in their yard. Yesterday's (Friday, so I hear) was

REASONABLE
RESOLUTIONS
START 2010 RIGHT

which takes a lot of rocks. I always wonder how they deal with kerning issues; it's very precise. So my reasonable and only resolution for 2010 is to try not to suck. Fair enough. Also, I would like to make something involving roasted cauliflower at some point before 2011. There you have it.

The girlfriend is off for a day of refereeing, the boy is off at his dad's and points unknown, and back here at Chez Bolt the dishes want washing and the floors could do with some attention and the shed yet again failed to magically clean itself out overnight. In other words, life as usual has triumphed over the holiday afterglow and today's bowl games aren't close to compelling enough to justify putting off usual life's demands for another day.

One more cup of coffee and I'll get moving. Oh, yes, and Dick Cheney can go fuck himself.

Year-end Christmas Present Special

New office decoration.

Yes, I do have the best girlfriend ever. No, not the pretend one in the poster, the real one who put the poster under the tree this year.

Year-end Pre-January 1 Bowl Games Special

The Arizona Wildcats apparently thought last night was their Holiday Bowl walk-through rather than the actual game, and came away with a 33-0 drubbing at the hands of a pissed-off Nebraska team. The highlight of the evening for the 'Cats was Ndamukong Suh's failure to behead either of the UA quarterbacks. Three of Arizona's top signees for next season picked the U over Nebraska; the incoming AD better check to see that those letters of intent are signed in blood, or carved in stone, or possibly both.

Notre Dame did not play.

The end.

Year-end Abby Wambach Girlfriend Special

I think about current events and then slave away over the keyboard for full minutes, searching for just the perfect combination of words and the most apt turn of phrase, to bring my readership the most insightful commentary possible on politics and culture, occasionally baseball and soccer and food, every once in a while a heartfelt and poignant essay on life and family. And what do people want to know about? What brings them here in droves, more frequently than any other search terms?

abby wambach girlfriend.

Jesus. Fine. For the final word on "abby wambach girlfriend," head on over to the Twitter and follow Sarah Huffman and you will get all the updates you need on that particular Wombat situation.

Meanwhile, I will continue to toil in political commentary obscurity, dreaming of the day that a certain MSNBC commentator, while Googling giant lesbians on the US national team, will realize she needs a regular correspondent from this little blue corner of a big red desert. A girl can dream, no?

Year-end Terror Special

Janet Napolitano had an unfortunate little moment of idiocy a couple days back when she said the thwarted Christmas Day airliner attack showed that "the system worked," unless TSA's new super-effective security system relies on incompetent terrorists setting their nuts on fire, immobilizing them long enough for the nearest Dutchman to get them in a headlock. In which case it worked just fine.

Arizona's own esteemed junior senator, Jon Kyl (R-OhForFuck'sSake) piled on yesterday with his own little bout of idiocy.

Sen. Jon Kyl said he doesn't "feel totally safe'' with Janet Napolitano at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security, given that agency's handling of the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

Kyl said it was bad enough that the Nigerian got on the plane in the first place given what should have been warning signals. But in response to a question about whether he feels secure with Napolitano heading Homeland Security, he said that is only part of the problem.

Yes, the guy was dragging more red flags than the entire Pamplona running of the bulls and The Last Samurai combined and still managed to buy a ticket in Africa and get on a plane in Amsterdam. But. Unless Janet Napolitano was personally standing at the jetway door in Lagos saying come in! you fool! and waving Captain Underpants onto the plane without a passport, I'm not sure she's the one who needs to be slapped around here. Except, of course, for saying the parts of the system not involving self-immolation and alert Dutchmen worked.

Frankly, her words may have been more of an inadvertent slip than the up-is-down doublespeak/dumbassery we took them for at first. TSA security is... not thought out perhaps as well as it could be, shall we say, something I've thought ever since Richard Reid failed to ignite his Chuck Taylors and condemned the traveling public to taking off their shoes at security at the rest of forever. I said then that if I ran an al Qaeda cell I wouldn't bother trying to actually kill people, but would simply send a string of flunkies onto planes to pull off increasingly absurd failed attacks involving increasingly intimate levels of undergarments, just to see how far TSA would go with their reactionary rather than preventative rules. OMG a shoe bomber! Everybody take off your shoes! Jesus, a bra bomber! Sorry, ladies, but that's going to have to go into the bin. Holy shit, a hair bomber! Please hop into the barber chair right here at the shoe dropoff, okay?

And then aQ went and spoiled it by ramping up immediately to their underwear bomber, and the best TSA could bring themselves to do is no blankets and no laptops and no paperbacks and no wanking through your pants in the last hour of flight. Because the very first thing that went through everyone's mind when this news broke was underwear bomber = everybody flies naked now and TSA can't make that particular the-jokes-just-write-themselves joke come true. So they slap together more patchwork rules that essentially say okay, don't try THAT particular tactic again, which does pretty much zero to prevent the next new thing aQ will think up to make air travel even more annoying and possibly deadly, and I'm left with the distinct impression that the ultimate fallback system TSA is really counting on is passengers noticing something off and saying oh FUCK no and jumping the next guy who tries to blow up a plane.

Bruce Schneier, whose job is to think about this stuff, thinks the same thing.

"Security theater" refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Happy traveling, America! And hey, keep your hands where I can see them.

Late December

*knock knock* Is this thing on? The annual post-Christmas timewarp trek up to my family in Flagstaff always makes it feel like forever since I've been back in my regular life. My brother and cousins and I crowded up to the table and played games and got fed and managed to forget for a couple of hours that we all got started on our personal white hair farms a long time ago. My son--aghast at learning that the piece of white wire he plucked from his own head last month was not an anomaly, but instead an unavoidable genetic legacy courtesy of a grandma we suspect started coloring at an early age--joined in and confused the hell out of me for a while because he's the age now that I usually feel I am at these confabs.

We sat around the fire drinking wassail and my father joined in the games he usually swore he hated playing and stayed up 'til midnight playing and laughing instead of stomping off to bed at nine grousing at us that we'd never get up in time for breakfast if we didn't go to bed too. He carried extra logs inside and put them on the fire and asked if I wanted more to drink, didn't hassle my brother inordinately, ruffled his grandson's hair and smiled, and it was warm in the house against the single-digit wind outside and I was seventeen again or maybe ten and the world was simple and right.

Yesterday morning I got up from the twin bed I slept in as a kid, straightened the dinosaur print blankets added to the mix when my younger brothers inherited the beds for their room, loaded up the car and pointed it home. A low sky hung to the south as the ponderosa pines thinned and the rocks asserted themselves above the snow and we dropped down below the rim to rolling rangeland, the raggedy gray cloud veil standing sentry over the passing through before we were spat back out into the desert where the calendar matters.

Boggle.

O_o. While I was away ripping out chicken wire and catclaw and building new fences and baking the wrong cookies and half-assedly dusting, the Republican leadership officially went batshit crazy.

Wow. When did Hulk Hogan get a second job as a mouthbreathing evangelist? And where is his spandex? I was originally going to slice this up and deal with the little bits piece by piece, but it's taking longer to scrape my jaw off the floor than I thought it would. Just watch the whole thing, maybe three times, and explain to me if I'm wrong in concluding that these witnessing chowderheads have finally conclusively demonstrated that they have abandoned any pretense of rational thought. Who is the Logic: Ur Doin It Rong poster boy here? Jim DeMint (R-Leviticus)?

If we have the government making decisions about the most personal and private part of our lives, it is so naive to think that that coverage is not gonna include a number of things that cause people of faith a lot of heartburn, whether it's funding abortions... whether it's funding medical marijuana...

Or Sam Brownback (R-James Dobson's Pocket)?

The Democrat [sic] leadership wants to fund abortion in this bill. And it's real tragic, because abortion's not healthcare!

Nice effort there by Brownback, but then DeMint brings it home with the simplest and only summation you really need.

We cannot fall for this idea that we need to keep our faith in the closet and let the country go its own secular way.

Congratulations, Jimmy D, for that spectacular bit of fail. Pardon me for not sticking around to join the jesusjesusjesus mumblers around you, but I need to get shopping for a bigger hat if y'all are calling down so much wrath from heaven.

I Come to Work to Recover from My Weekends

*flump* and Boltgirl collapses into the spring-shot non-ergonomic office chair nicked from the conference room several years ago when the last hand-me-down chair stopped being tolerable, and takes a deep breath.

Our annual holiday party hit Saturday afternoon and evening, and was lovely and exhausting as ever. Despite the large group (~65 hardy souls) and significant number of children under the age of five, absolutely nothing sticky got spilled on the floor, and every last empty bottle and can made it into the recycling bin. While this considerably diminished the usual Easter morning find-the-weirdest-places-people-decided-to-leave-stuff quality of the next day's cleanup, I was impressed. The exhaustion came in large part from--in what is becoming an alarmingly annual occurrence--something large and structural deciding to fall down in the yard, requiring a major construction episode starting 48 hours before the first guests were supposed to show up.

In the end, the new stuff got built and the landscaping got repaired, but I ran out of time to produce two signature dessert items and ended up with the wrong ingredients leading to a substandard batch of the signature hot spiced cider, and exactly one person noticed--that would be me--all of which served to remind me that the point of the whole deal is to reconnect with old friends and share hospitality with new ones and not send anyone home poisoned. And by those most important standards, it was a rollicking success.

In Which We Have a Request for Santa

Random poster benefiting the American Library Association.

Want. Wantwantwant. Uh, because I'm a huge fan of reading, of course. That's the only reason. Seriously.

But a Supermajority Sounded Like Such a Good Idea at the Time

And this is how it ends. Can someone please explain to me--big words are fine--how a party can spend eight years being shit on by the majority and then, after gaining not only a majority but a veto-fucking-proof sixty seats, make their number one perpetual priority not offending the other party and caving in to their every demand? It's a classic abusive relationship, except, I suppose, for that crucial part where the abuser apologizes and makes nice for a while and promises to change, mainly because the Republicans and conservative Democrats and in-it-strictly-for-the-ego-stroking-and cash independents like Joe Lieberman face absolutely zero repercussions for their behavior and know no effort is necessary on their part to make a show of contrition that will bring the Dems crawling back with renewed hope. Seriously, fuck that sanctimonious Lieberman and every spineless Democrat who refused to call shenanigans on his bullshit and Bart Stupak's bullshit and Ben Nelson's bullshit and and the entire wad of bullshit confit in bullshit served over a bullshit puree with caramelized bullshit sauce and fennel fronds.

Teabaggers, you win. You stuck up for the insurance companies and worked against your own self-interest in working against the best interests of the nation, predictably and right on schedule, and the fucking Republicans and their pet Lieberman laugh all the way to the Aetna hospitality suite.

Yo, fierce advocate. Step it the fuck up, man.

Adventures in Reading

Sometimes old books are cool just because they're old, and sometimes they are downright MADE OF AWESOME. This one belonged to my great-uncle George.





















First Reader, by Florence Rose, Heath & Co., Boston, 1904

Advent Time

My days of lighting the purple and pink candles in the Advent wreath are long past, and I haven't had a decent chocolate-filled calendar in years, but Chez Bolt is quietly preparing for Christmas. Oh, you'd barely notice it from the outside. Some lights are up, but we haven't gotten around to finding the extension cords yet, so they're strictly a daytime decoration so far, and the tree has yet to make an appearance, and the stuffed albino squirrel still awaits his Santa cap.

I have been killing the time between the ordinary calendar and the appearance of the aforementioned harbingers of the season by baking cookies and playing music, reaching back into the past with the muscle memory of rolling pins and puffs of flour and ancient harmonies on the vocal cords as the past reaches forward with bubbling memories of scents and reverberation, and we meet somewhere in a middle where my grandfather still hangs boughs in every room and my grandmother scurries about a warm kitchen.

The house is shuttered now, of course, my grandfather long the property of the stars and the saints and my grandmother fading in the haze of a nursing home, and a thousand miles away I cut her shapes into dough and play his chords and, for the briefest time, collapse the years and the distance and feel Christmas again.

Merrily, on high.

The Weekend in Sports

The Friday in Sports, more like it, although it's effectively ended the Weekend in Sports not 20 minutes after it began. Uh, chickie pea in the pink shorts on co-ed team Should B? Yeah, you, the one who hacked me and trashed my ankle when you were already up 11-9 in players and 4-1 in goals? 20 minutes in? Yeah, fuck you. Instead of beers with my teammates I got a hot date with a cold bag of frozen peas. Fuck off with your hacky ways. I'm too old for this.

The upside is getting a jump on watching the women's College Cup on the DVR. Stanford beats UCLA on two Oh My Goodness goals resulting from rapid-fire collect-control-turn-SHOOT shots that left the Bruin keeper helpless and flat-footed. ND-UNC is up next; go Irish.

What else... ND declined a bowl bid, thank Touchdown Jeebus. In Additional Upside News, the upside to the crap season is lots of ND gear being offered at deep discounts, so I got matching Zbikowski jerseys (or Tony Rice, or Kyle Rudolph) for myself and my brother for Christmas.

And Kevin made the finals of Top Chef. Life is good, except for this ankle.

In Which We Have the Glimmer of a Chance

I would point out, for the record, that Boltgirl is also obsessed with The Weather Channel.

Continued Moments in WTF-ery

It's cold and dark when I have to get out of bed in the morning now, which I do not want to do in general and not at all now that we put the flannel sheets and extra blankets on, making the bed more of a giant warm marshmallow wrapped in a flannelly cloud cocoon that I DO NOT WANT TO CRAWL OUT OF EVER, plus judging from the interesting odor in here something appears to have died in my office overnight and it wasn't just dreams of weddings and rings and fabulous parties in New York.

Humph.

So I'm spending my smoking breaks today--since I don't smoke--finding bits of marriage-related right-wing fuckery and posting them here. No fumar aqui, pero fumo cueste lo que cueste. Forthwith, courtesy of Joe.My.God.:

In a Christian Post article about an upcoming biography of Saddleback megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, we learn that Warren freely admits that when he married his wife, he didn't love her, was not attracted to her, and had "no feelings" for her at all. But he married her anyway because the marriage had been arranged. By God.

Good for you, Rick! Congratulations on your loveless arranged marriage! Fucking hell.

My New Hero

Nicked from Jezebel, promulgated here. Thank you, Diane Savino.

Stop the Presses; Boltgirl Disagrees--Gasp--with Rachel

Oh, it was bound to happen eventually.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I don't see yesterday's escalation announcement as a new iteration of the Bush Doctrine so much as a response to the original Afghanistan situation continuing, albeit in a different venue; instead of blowing the whistle to stop the game and issue the Taliban a well-deserved red card, some cosmic referee has shouted play on as the action has spilled across the border into Pakistan. Except in this case the Taliban have grabbed the ball and taken it up into the stands and both teams are lobbing flares and batteries at each other, and we're somehow simultaneously opponent and referee, and the metaphor falls apart before our eyes. Much like the NATO coalition.

Anyway. Bad shit in Pakistan by the CIA and Blackwater Xe, drones and abduction teams and all, but even that doesn't make it a pre-emptive war by Team Obama. It's simply a new vector in an existing war, just as it's a new vector for Pakistan's ISI and a new vector for India's intelligence service, and for the warlords depending on support from one side or the other, a giant triangulated chess match that devolves into Red Rover more often than not. The Taliban are operating with impunity from Quetta, just as they operated from Kandahar before we got there. Same shit, different day, slightly different setting, same problem.

Amazingly, this has diminished my ardor for Dr. Maddow exactly not at all. Shocker!

War Footing

Argh. What to think, what to think? It was a long speech that boils down to 30,000 additional troops going to Afghanistan with the goal of stabilizing the country within 18 months and then leaving the former factional warlord-and-druglord driven shithole of corruption as a shiny new intact unified nation with a nice new transparent government and equal rights for women and people who can read and a marked lack of support for Taliban and roses instead of poppies.

No word as yet on where Obama plans to find the pod people for the replacements that will be necessary for this to work.

I am torn here. The Afghanistan adventure was doomed from the outset when Rumsfeld and his ilk decided to go in on an economy plan that was light on troops and heavy on cash payments to bribe warlords, tribal leaders, and drug dealers, with an exterminator's mindset rather than a community organizer's. The NATO alliance failed to focus on infrastructure building and thus failed to address the underlying issues creating the climate that made the Taliban such an attractive option to the populace in the first place, and whose resolution would have eliminated the conditions that allowed the Taliban to maintain a stranglehold on the people when they replaced the original despair with a newer, Sharia version of misery.

If you have not yet picked up Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, please do so now and spend the next week reading it, as well as hoping fervently that either Obama or someone with his ear has done the same. Eighteen months to undo decades of pure chaos and malfeasance? I hope it works. Without a parallel level of effort, money, and manpower on the part of just about every country in NATO, directed as much at infrastructure and civil affairs as military objectives, I'm not sure how this happens in eighteen months, if at all.

Humbug.

Christmas season sort of unofficially started today, I guess, maybe, although if Target is your cultural calendrical referent, it may have started sometime before Halloween. Ecclesiastically, I do not think we're into Advent yet--haven't been paying attention on that score for a while now--although the chocolate-filled Advent calendar season starts on Tuesday.

It's all very confusing.

No lights are up yet at Chez Bolt, and the Christmas CDs haven't made the annual migration over to the stereo yet. I may have seen them lacing up their boots for the trek earlier this evening. They will probably make it sometime tomorrow.

We are floating in the singular state of dread that presages a migraine. It's a familiar dance now, a regular pasa doble of pressure and pain feinting and retreating and circling and feinting forward again against the decision that's vascillating between waiting it out just a little longer or sucking it up and swallowing one of the ten-buck pills that promise relief, maybe, unless it's not a migraine, in which case I might as well take a ten-spot outside and set it on fire in the driveway. Maybe if I close my eyes. Maybe if I sip some Bailey's over ice. Maybe if I gouge my left eyeball out it will all go away.

Bailey's is winning so far.

One of the comments left on an online story this morning about the insane midnight shoppers suggested that people make charitable contributions in lieu of gifts. That sorta depends, I think. My ex-brother-and-sister-in-law memorably gave the charitable contribution route a bad name in their family one Christmas many years ago when they made contributions for everyone on their gift list. To their own favorite charity. The other ex-sister-in-law was downright pissed since she'd spent considerable time and money locating works by her brother's favorite potter for his gift. I guess she didn't see a bag of dog food in her name as being quite equivalent. Nice enough idea, clumsy execution; it helps for everyone to be on the same page.

Speaking of being on the same page, in other news, if I join a game of Facebook Scrabble you've started, it hurts my feelings when the game is summarily deleted. What the fuck is with people when it comes to Lexulous? Oh, your rating--which changes hourly, BTW--is too low/too high to be acceptable! Oh, your first word scored too many/too few points! You said hello! You didn't say hello! Delete! Delete! Seriously, people, I can't take this kind of rejection.

Hmmm. Maybe Relpax is the ticket.

Black Friday

No, Best Buy was not graced with my presence in the wee hours last night before the leftover gravy was even finished congealing, nor Wal-Mart in the predawn chill this morning, nor Target or K-Mart or Lenny's House of Rattan or anywhere else that dangled discounted TVs and Barbie DreamJets like so much chum before a tankful of hammerheads.

I don't get the appeal. I like money--and saving it--as much as the next guy, but there is just something seriously wrong with people who willingly give up their post-Thanksgiving stupor with family and friends to go stand in a fucking parking lot with hundreds of other like-minded schlubs to wait for the opportunity to push, shove, tackle, stampede, get in fistfights, and possibly be trampled to death in order to "save" money by "spending" assloads of cash on carts full of crap they are only buying because LOOK OMFG IT'S ON SALE. Oh, these DVDs are on sale for $12.99! Here, let's get fifty of 'em! Yes, my total bill was $700 and change, but look at how much I saved!

One time. I participated in the cattle call exactly one time, at what, looking back ten years, feels like the beginning of the phenomenon, in the hoary days when Toys 'R' Us took the bold, groundbreaking step of opening at SIX IN THE MORNING--oh, the vapors--and my grandparents thought it would be worth getting up that early to save ten bucks on some Hot Wheels garage thing they wanted to get for my son. We dutifully reported about 6:30 and stood in line at the register for half an hour, and after surviving that barely-a-blip-on-the-radar, barely-a-drop-in-the-bucket-of-things-to-come, shook our heads and decided it hadn't been worth it, and felt ashamed.

I can't fathom doing that now. Some people are certainly in it for the sport of it all, the excitement of feeling part of... something inexplicable, the challenge of laying out a plan of attack and storming the store in a coordinated assault. Others probably truly believe this is the only way they can afford to do Christmas the way they feel they need to do it for their kids or spouses or own egos or something. It's a mystery to me. If you'd like to give me a present, I'd prefer something small and thoughtful. I will not enjoy knowing you blew off Thanksgiving dinner to hold a vigil outside the mall and then ran over several old ladies as you dove for the shelf to grab the last whatever out of the hands of the person who reached it a split second before you did. Just bake me some cookies instead, okay?

My shopping today will be limited to a paintbrush I need for planned work around the house later this evening, and possibly a box of cereal in case breakfast beckons tomorrow. Enjoy my contributions, Black Friday economy! Wipe the grudge off the fiver if you need to!

Thanksgiving

The multi-generational pie.

This year's Thanksgiving pie was cobbled (ha!) together from a filling recipe found in my maternal grandmother's 1953 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, a pastry recipe from my paternal grandmother's mother, which Grandma taught me to make 20 years ago, and my tweaks of honeycrisp apples and the addition of apple cider in place of the water in the pastry.

Oh, and the pastry leaves on top were Martha Stewart's idea.

The pie made the trip up to the Land of Old Republican People with me and the boy, and while I have been grumbling about this business of (1) having to go to Mesa for Thanksgiving (2) with elderly relatives whose politics and religious fervor do not exactly mesh smoothly with my own (3) without my girlfriend, ultimately it was pretty okay. This may well be the last Thanksgiving my grandparents (90 and 87) see, and I am glad I was with them. My family is flung all across the country, and we have the same stupid shit going on that every family does from time to time, but I'm glad I have them. And pie. I hope your day brought things to be thankful for as well.

Oh, Facebook, You Pose Such Conundrums

Is it rude to de-friend a family member? How long would it take him to notice? I already hide him from my news feed, so in order to be aware of him at all I have to look him up, which I should not do, but sometimes curiosity gets the best of me and then I spend the next couple of hours with a knot in my stomach and the veins in my head playing that nasty kaBOOSH kaBOOSH cadence on a nonstop loop. You'd think I would have learned by now.

He's getting married in October. That should be a fun wedding; I'm hoping that instead of the usual bride-groom split on either side of the aisle the ushers ask Right-wing Conservative Evangelical Military Worshipping Obama Haters or Reality-based Community?

How's that Free Market Working Out for You?

E-mail from the boss this morning:

We have received our renewal offer from Cigna and it is extremely ugly. They are proposing a rate increase of 35%.

Boy, I sure hope the Blue Dogs manage to keep the public option out of the Senate healthcare bill, since the competition-free "market" has done such a dandy job of keeping our insurance plan affordable.

Another Day, Another Knee

Sprained my left MCL five seconds into the kiddie game I refereed last night. Excellent.

In other news, the dour parent state legislature stripped control of the Rio Nuevo project from starry-eyed and tragically unfocused Tucson yesterday, taking back what's left of the hard-earned allowance and babysitting money and quashing the dreams of aquariums and museums and rainbow bridges and gardens and mixed-use residential/retail for good. You are building a hotel and convention center, and that's that. Slam goes the door, and Tucson falls facedown onto the twin bed, pounding its fists impotently and sobbing.

Don't talk to Jesus on the field, 'kay? I said to Wilson Middle School's center midfielder yesterday after the third time she followed up a biffed kick with Jesus! So I hope you're not reading this, miss midfielder, because Jesus Urban Planning Christ, what a clusterfuck this whole thing has been. A gazillion dollars pissed away with little but some very interesting archaeology to show for it. Really stellar archaeology, that, and I'm very proud of it, but somehow I don't think even enshrining featured chapters from our technical reports Constitution-style would be the tourist draw/revenue stream the city was hoping for when it began this venture many many years ago.

The city should have given Jim Counts his loan and his land back in the beginning and developed a plaza around that brewpub centerpiece. Attractive open central space surrounded by interesting retail and restaurants has been a fairly successful formula for as long as cities have been around. Nimbus is thriving. Barrio Brewing is thriving. Unfortunately, they're thriving in the middle of industrial areas, so the potential spending energy emanating from the throngs of people they draw dissipates as soon as they stagger back to the vacant dirt lots where they parked, instead of happily spending money in the toy store or music store or vintage clothing store next door, since, as established, they're in the middle of nowhere. I'm just saying that the City of Tucson should have consulted with me first before chasing the herd of rainbow-shitting unicorns they were sure were hiding just behind that tortoise-shaped arena they built in their heads.