New Year in the Women's Soccer Calendar Cycle

Wow. It's so hard to get worked up for writing a lather-filled screed about a game that was a giant pile of meh, so let's have a gallon or two of coffee and try to ramp up gradually here.

The US-Mexico Women's World Cup qualifying match exposed the same US weaknesses we have fretted about since 2007 (lack of speed, lack of technical precision, snooze-inducing tactics, over-reliance on Route 1 to Abby's head), but did so in a way that we hope is horrifyingly novel enough to have gotten somebody's attention. You know, somebody else who might be able to do something about the situation.

The 4-4-2 is over. Time for a 4-3-3, a 4-2-3-1, something to beef up the attack. Something with options besides Wambach, who can find the back of the net with her head like no other and is demonstrably tougher than nails (say what you will about her occasionally limited game and questionable past leadership; nobody could watch her standing there with blood pouring from her head and being stapled--stapled!--up on the sideline and not bust out with a well fuck all, go America!). Keep her up there in the middle as an aerial option, but please, please, please, start Alex Morgan and Lauren Cheney up there with her as more mobile, slashing, versatile attackers. Amy Rodriguez is very fast, very very fast, but until the goals are expanded (see: barn, broad side of), she isn't a realistic scoring threat on the international level.

Speaking of scoring threat, any level, Carli Lloyd? Really? Still on the roster at all, let alone starting? Really? Pia, honey, we can put that long-overdue discussion about the merits of wearing a bra on the back burner for now, because we really need to talk about some of your personnel decisions. Lloyd sucks. Trust me on this; I'm a Red Stars fan. Boxx? Oh god. I love Boxxy. But at 33 she's lost a step, and holding mids (remember that position?) need a step. She is perhaps emblematic of a problem where many players appear to be on the roster because, well, they made the roster at some point in the past and you're reluctant to discard people that are past their shelf lives. You can afford one long-long-long-term savvy veteran on the field, if you surround that player with a bunch of young legs, so sure, keep Lil parked in the midfield. Everyone else, though, needs to perform or lose their spots.

Krieger? Nogueira? Averbuch? Rapinoe? Until Heath is healthy again, I do not know where the answer lies in the midfield. Back line? Brrrr. LePeilbet is fine. Rampone, I suppose, can still get it done but needs to have some real afterburner speed next to her. Mitts? Not so much. Cox? Maybe.

Keeper? Until Solo is back and demonstrably her old self, what the hell, throw Loyden in there and see what happens. Or Ashlyn Harris, who has demonstrated the ability to stand on her head and pirouette and tap dance all at the same time if it keeps the ball out of the net.

Just change it up, Pia. Jesus. Please. What you've been doing does not work. Player combinations that first fielded ten years ago do not work now. The baffling lack of a short passing/creative runs control game really does not work. Just running full out worked fifteen years ago, but now the rest of the planet has caught up, and we no longer have the monopoly on good athletes who can run circles around everyone else well into their thirties. Now we need great young athletes and tactical superiority just to keep up with Germany, and Norway, and... Mexico.

One and done territory, kids. Lose and the US does not go to the World Cup, which is on the level of the Yankees being mathematically eliminated on May 15. Win and the prize is a two-leg play-in game against Italy, with the last leg on November 27. In Chicago. Fucking hell. Catch the carnage on ESPN2 at 6pm EST tonight.

Arizona Voters Do Not Fail to Disappoint

Pima County acquitted itself fairly well yesterday. The rest of the state, unfortunately, not so much.

Governor: Jan Brewer bravely overcame the revelations that she is (1) in bed with the private Prison industry, and (2) a blithering idiot, to beat Terry Goddard, although at 53%-40% it wasn't quite the trouncing I expected. Her first priority is to scrounge money from dedicated funds to move into the state's general fund, but, luckily, one of the few bright spots in the statewide balloting was the defeat of initiatives that would have let her raid the land conservation and early childhood development funds.

Senate: Walnuts McCain stomped Democrat (nee Republican) Rodney Glassman, surprising exactly no one. I am not at all sure that Glassman would have been better for Arizona so much as a different flavor of sleazy.

US House: Still undecided! Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords are currently clinging to leads of a couple thousand votes with about 350,000 left to be counted. Most of the yet-to-be-counteds are from Pima (hopeful!) and Maricopa (brrrr!) counties, which might end up canceling each other out. We hope.

AZ Attorney General: Noted dim bulb Tom Horne edged out a Democrat I'd never heard of but who, I thought, had at least a coin flip's chance of having a few more brain cells to rub together than Horne does on any given day. The bright spot? He's no longer in charge of what passes for an education department. The dark spot? Tucson Unified School District has been in his sights for a long time for having the temerity to offer Latino heritage and culture classes to their Latino-majority student body, even after Arizona passed a law explicitly aimed at making ethnic studies programs Tom Horne doesn't like illegal. And now he's the chief prosecutor in the state? Have fun with that, TUSD!

Secretary of State, otherwise known as Lieutenant Governor: Republican Ken Bennett in a wash, meaning that if Jan-Jan resigns or just plain forgets to come in to work for a year or so, the governorship stays in Republican hands. Which does not bode well for the future, considering that noted white supremacist-consorting, private prisons lackey Russell Pearce is the new president of the state senate.

Prop 106 (Fuck Healthcare): I must say that I'm impressed with the drive and determination of Arizona voters. Not content to be at the bottom of national rankings for education and children-in-poverty levels (we recently passed Alabama to claim that title), the voters made sure that we will soon be at the bottom for healthcare as well. Prop 106, which passed by 130,000 votes, amends the state constitution to say no Arizonan is required to buy health insurance or participate in a health plan. Yeah, we'll see.

Prop 107 (Fuck Nonwhite Nonmales): The voters decided even more resoundingly to make affirmative action illegal. There are still many questions about whether this will end programs designed to keep female and nonwhite students in college (despite the fact that Arizona universities and colleges currently do not consider race or gender in admissions). Tom Horne is undoubtedly lining up the lawsuits as we speak.

Prop 203 (Medical Marijuana): Barely losing at the moment.

Well, at least Ken Buck and Sharron Angle won't be haunting Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio will, and, saddest of all, Russ Feingold will be watching this one from the bench. I remember how the morning after Election Day 1994 felt. This feels worse.

Oh, Jesse.

Can I just say that I love Jesse Kelly's new ad? Jesse is trying to take Gabrielle Giffords' US House seat (AZ-8), and is feeling some heat for some of his positions, like, say, eliminating the federal income tax in favor of an across-the-board 23% sales tax, and eliminating food inspectors (because we are all responsible for taking care of ourselves, which apparently means following people home from Safeway and carefully watching them for 48 hours after their backyard BBQs to see if they contract e. coli from this week's bargain hamburger before we feed it to our own families), and, oh yes, outlawing all abortion no matter what.

What's Jesse's approach in the face of these crippling revelations about his creepy-ass ideas? Why, it's this: AMERICA, BITCHEZ.

Ha ha, there's just no time between now and Tuesday to address the issues Congresswoman Giffords has helpfully pointed out to the voters, so AMERICA! Cut taxes, cut spending, and KEEP AMERICA STRONG! Did you know I'm a Marine? Oh, all that stuff you've been hearing about my complete douchecadet positions on women's reproductive freedoms, and wanting you to fork over an additional $23 bucks on your weekly $100 grocery bill? For food that may or may not kill you? Don't worry your pretty heads about that, because: AMERICA!

Please go out and vote tomorrow. It's kind of a big deal.

US Soccer is Wearing on Boltgirl's Very Last Nerve

CONCACAF qualifying for the 2011 World Cup is underway, and in a surprise to no one, we beat Haiti again. Haiti have never scored against us, at least on the women's side, and tonight the US poured in five goals that could easily have been ten. That's fine; I'm actually glad that the score stayed both in single digits and in the bottom half of one through ten, since blowouts don't do anything for either side, nor for the game in general. My problem is with this:

Lori Lindsay goes to the spa plays soccer in a jersey that renders redundant the giant O HAI I'M A GURL sign the Fed would clearly prefer.

What, US Soccer, the holy hell is this? I muddled through the men's World Cup this past summer and those godawful 1950s throwback jerseys with the knowledge that at least the women's side wore sharp-looking shirts. Well, I'm glad the Fed jumped right on it and brought that nonsense to a stop. The clean lines are gone. Now we have weird wraparound piping that makes Wambach et al. look like they're tied into those awkward kimono things you put on before getting your highlights touched up.

The upside is that the level of fug almost keeps me from being annoyed that you can't buy these things anywhere--but, of course, the official US Soccer store will still sell you any permutation of the men's kit you can think of, as well as a Freddy Adu hero t-shirt, just in case anyone's left who still thinks they guy has a future. Or maybe they're banking on people confusing him with actual starter Maurice Edu and buying up all the stock before they have to put it in remainders.

Anyway. The women go at it again on Saturday night against Guatemala, and the match is being streamed on the CONCACAF website, kimonos and all, so give it a look and see what you think. I think I don't like it.

While I Was Away

I swear, you can't leave this state on its own for more than 24 hours without someone forgetting to shut the door and letting the stupid in.

To be fair, there was already a shit-ton of stupid here (Exhibit #1: RealSheriffJoe). Palin's Maricopa County-issued pink panties are just the stupid cherry on the stupid cake.

In other news, it turns out that one of the judges who will be deciding whether Arizona can go ahead and start enforcing the odious SB1070 papers-please law was himself almost deported back in the 1950s when he was a resident alien. Turns out it was just a small series of mistakes on the then-college student future judge's part compounded by an INS officer, but an appeals board sorted it all out and the future judge eventually attained citizenship. Of course, the Daily Star's usual commenting pack of reading comprehension champions are convinced that the judge is a Cuban (Spaniard, actually) draft dodger (he wasn't) appointed by Clinton (by W, actually) who needs to recuse himself right away because he cannot possibly be neutral in any immigration matter now.

This is the same pack that howled about Sonia Sotomayor potentially deciding cases involving Latinas, wise or dull, and about big gay judge Vaughn Walker nixing Prop 8. Corporate lawyer John Roberts siding with corporations in Citizens United, though, was simply jurisprudence. The pack might not have agreed, but it was the decision they took issue with, not the perception that the background of the person making it had any influence on it whatsoever.

What will Arizona do today? I shudder in anticipation.

Jet Setter Goes Jetting

Off to Seattle for the weekend. I hear it may actually rain this time.

Dear Teabaggers

Dear Tea Party Americans:

Let me be the first to admit that I qualify as what you most likely define as an elitist. I have a college degree. In fact, I have a master's degree on top of that. I read a variety of newspapers and works of fiction and non-fiction. I have strong liberal tendencies. I speak and read German tolerably well, can get by in Spanish, and can phonetically read Hebrew even though I don't understand a lick of it. I am a student of the Howard Zinn version of history, not the Glenn Beck chalkboard revisionist version. I spent my college and young adult years in Chicago and have traveled and worked abroad. I hate country music and do not believe that driving a car around in circles for hours counts as a sport, no matter how fuckin' awesome the burnout at the end is. I do the New York Times Sunday crossword in pen. Jane Addams is a personal hero. Oh, and I've got The Ghey.

Elitist to the core.

Be that as it may, I don't want people just like me running the country. I want the people running the country to be smarter and more capable than I am. I want them to be able to grasp complex geopolitical and economic concepts, do a million things at once, and function on very little sleep. I do not want the average American Joe off the street or average Boltgirl off the blogosphere running the government with good old common sense. I want policy analysis with some teeth to it.

I definitely do not want poeple like Sharron "Hispanic? You look Asian to me" Angle and Christine "the First Amendment says WHUH?" O'Donnell anywhere near the halls of power unless they are clutching tourist maps and paying attention for the first time in their lives.

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

That's not elitism, Tea Bag Nation. That's the fucking common sense you keep howling about. I don't try to fix my plumbing because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with home repair once we migrate away from wood and nails. I get Mike from Expert Plumbing to come out and do it for me, because he's excellent and fast. I don't want him writing legislation for me, however, no matter how good he is at sweating pipes together. Putting witchcraft and Hare Krishna-ism and the aversion to wanking aside for the moment, do you think Christine O'Donnell is a salt-of-the-earth common person just like you? Awesome. Good on you. She's cute and perky as all get out. But governing is complex, and hard--just like Barbie always said math is--and it takes more than pluck and a smile. A basic understanding of the Constitution you're sworn to uphold might make a nice start, and since that inherently requires the ability to rub two brain cells together, well, 'nuff said.

love and kisses,

Boltgirl

Stuff on My Mind

1. Rage! At work! Enter my new sunshiny office with caution. If you're preceded by a plate of cookies or bottle of single-barrel bourbon, you stand a better chance of leaving with your head.

2. Sharron Angle! Jesus Christ. I listened to twenty minutes of her debate with Harry Reid tonight before hitting my limit, and now give mad props to Harry Reid for not vaulting over the lecterns and tearing her insipid, insipid throat out before it could vomit up more tripe like "Obamacare" and "legislate from the bench" and "one man one woman."

3. Pinot noir! Did not like! But this Mirassou '09 is quite delightful.

4. Rage! At the gym! Because rehab is not progressing the way I would like. Also I discovered that I really do not enjoy being naked around a bunch of strangers. Worried about homoseckshuals stalking you in the shower? I should be Exhibit One re: keeping eyes so downcast and working so hard to get dressed in a flash that I managed to (a) put my boxers on backwards, then b) turn them inside out while trying to get them off and then back on in a hurry, and finally (c) topple over into the lockers in the process.

5. Mays Counter in Tucson. Go there and eat a lot.

6. Rage! Over DADT! Is the DOJ appeal simply another brilliant move in Obama's brilliant three-dimensional aikido Holmesian chess game that we mortals simply will not understand until the whole thing comes together in a giant fucking explosion of oh, so that's what the fuck he's been doing all this time? Or is it just another unfortunate opportunity to get comparisons between gays and goat-fuckers into the official record? Only time will tell.

7. Rage! Seriously, the work thing has me down, and is sucking the confidence and poise right outta me. I'm back to being the funny-looking kid from the sticks, at least in my head, and IT SUCKS.

8. Well, Mays. Jesus cornmeal-breaded Christ, that place makes everything better. Just get your cholesterol and all that shizz checked before you eat there, not after. Your arteries will protest but your soul will be very, very happy.

In Which the Arizona Governor's Race Gets Even More Stupid

So the guy who lost the Democratic senate primary in Arizona to closet Republican Rodney Glassman (who will be trounced by Maricopa County Republicans voting for John McCain anyway) posted this little nugget Friday on his Facebook:

Is it just because Jan Brewer looks and sounds like a chain-smoker who's been lying out in the Phoenix sun eight hours a day for the last 40 years? I'm more concerned with her lack of mental acuity than the tarballs she hacks up each morning, and actual attributable information is always a plus, but to each his own.

Brewer's puppetmaster, private prisons lobbyist Chuck Coughlin, sprang to her defense with the kind of class that, frankly, we've come to expect: he called Terry Goddard, Brewer's opponent in the gubernatorial race, gay.

Her top campaign adviser blamed her opponent, Terry Goddard, for fanning the gossip and said it was irrelevant.

But then the adviser, Chuck Coughlin, went on to say that if the media are inquiring about Brewer's health, reporters should question Goddard about his sexual orientation.

Remember, Arizona: there are only 20 days left before November 2, and Chuck Coughlin has set the bar for political discourse pretty frickin' high here. Get on it, son!

Shhhhh...

Today is the Boltgirl Heritage Derby, featuring Ireland and Slovakia in a qualifying match for the 2012 Euros, and I am anxiously awaiting to see how Ireland can get screwed over in a football match this time. I hope it at least involves a streaker, a referee payoff, and a duck.

Friday Reading

Need some absorbing reading for your lunch break? We highly recommend this. Then get revenge for all the unhinged e-mails your right-wing brother has been sending you since the last presidential campaign started, and send it along to him and put your phone on vibrate.

The Measure of One Man

My grandfather died seven years ago, and not many days in a row go by that I don't think about him. Sometimes I see him in my dreams when I most need to, and sometimes I'm surprised to see him in my waking hours when I come across someone who shares his mannerisms, or his eyes, or the cadence of his speech.

I saw this on the Maddow Blog this morning, and in John Walker's quiet compassion and measured reason, I saw my grandpa again. Mr. Walker would kick ass even without that--his account of thinking around the biases he was raised to have should be required instruction in our time--but it was a nice little extra on an otherwise gloomy day in the desert.

I wanna be a goshawk.

Another Day, Another Kerfuffle

Hey, brother.

Michigan's assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell is in trouble for cyber-bullying the president of the University of Michigan's student government, with blog posts calling him, among other things, a radical homosexual activist--excuse me, let me make sure I quote Mr. Shirvell accurately--a RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST. I vaguely wondered if there was any chance that this might be yet another tired cliche of a self-loathing homo acting out by attacking a gay person, even though it's been done to death recently (really, Eddie Long, it's so derivative at this point--but the iPhone Under-Armour-in-the-bathroom pics were a nice touch!). So I figured I'd watch the video, and then Mr. Shirvell started talking at 0:24 and by 0:26 my gaydar was completely melted down into the same puddle with my irony meter and I spent the next seven minutes giggling uncontrollably.

Oh, Andrew, honey. You had me at "Well, Anderson..."

I have so many questions. How did this guy manage to get a job in the first place, much less manage to keep it more than a week? As assistant AG? Really? He's really an assistant attorney general? Like, for a state? And he really doesn't think any of his Perez Hilton stylings are the tiniest bit inappropriate for any, you know, actual adult who's decided to pick on a college kid? Oh, wait, that question answers itself.

“Did he think he was just going to get some kind of free pass just because he’s gay or whatever?,” Shirvell said earlier this month with Detroit TV station WXYZ. “I mean, we’re all adults here and so, you know, we’re treating him like an adult with adult level criticism.”

The University of Michigan must be so pleased. As a Notre Dame fan, I certainly am.

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhh

Sarah Palin, was it not enough to foist your goddamn spawn onto Dancing With The Stars? Did you really have to show up tonight and make me hit the mute button and throw the remote to my partner and jam my fingers in my ears yelling lalalalalalala just in case the mute didn't work and contort awkwardly in the recliner to hoop* the laptop up on my knees to block the TV, running the risk of spraining my spine in order to spare my eyes?

Fuck off, Sarah Palin. I need my mindless entertainment once a week, and you're getting the fuck in the way.

*yes, it comes with a sound effect. It sounds like hoop and comes from the diaphragm.

In Other Words

John McCain, referencing the Defense Department's OMG what if the Marine in the next bunk haz Teh Ghey survey, says we absolutely need to hear from people in uniform before we decide to stop axing Arabic translators for the sole reason that they are cunning linguists in more than one way.

The Air Force, in blessedly futile arguments that Major Margaret Witt should not be reinstated to her job as a flight nurse for a medevac team, says the opinions of people in uniform don't matter a rat's ass.

Her attorneys, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, insisted that Witt was well respected and liked by her colleagues, that her sexuality never caused problems in the unit, and that her firing actually hurt military goals such as morale, unit cohesion and troop readiness. Several members of the squadron testified to that effect and said they would welcome Witt back to the unit.

Lawyers for the Air Force said such evidence was irrelevant.

Military personnel decisions can't be run by unit referendum, they said.

They need to get on the same page here, because it at this point it looks like The Ghey is subject to referendum, but only when the overwhelming response comes back the way they were hoping. And given the wording of many of the DOD survey questions, the response they're fishing for is pretty clear. I am very curious about what the official reaction might be if even that survey ends up showing that most military people really don't care about team members' orientations as long as they do their jobs.

The Day in Sports

In volleyball news, last night the Philadelphia Independence downed the Boston Breakers and advanced to Sunday's championship match on a sweet kill by middle hitter Danesha Adams. Oh, wait, I'm getting a correction in my earpiece from my producers... Ah. It appears that the Breakers-Independence matchup was actually a soccer game--that would explain the nets being at the ends of the field instead of in the middle--which means that the game-winner was actually a Thierryffic hand job instead of the header Adams and the rest of the Independence decided to celebrate only after it was apparent referee Kari Seitz was calling for a kickoff from the center circle rather than a restart for Boston out of their own goal area.

Then Alex Scott had a OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE THE NET IS THAT WIDE OPEN I BETTER JUST LIE DOWN moment and whiffed from the six and that was that. I have done that before. You welcome death. Poor AS; can't imagine the plane ride back to England is going to be a whole lot of fun for her household.

Well, at least this way Philadelphia get to be the sacrificial lambs for Marta and the Supremes this weekend and Kelly Smith can get a jump on fixing whatever she did to her knee this time around. Frozen peas ease almost any pain, love.

Easy Way Out

Ah Christ, apparently those of us afflicted with The Ghey got shit on again in various ways today. I nicked all these from Joe.My.God because he's way more together than I am today. Also, I love Al Franken, even when he makes me cry.

First, John McCain splits a nut claiming that shit that happens doesn't actually happen.

Then Al Franken gets choked up.

And then, just for fun, a Saxby Chambliss staffer picked the wrong day to tell us all to drop dead.

Mercy, that's a full day right there. Why do I do this, again?

Feeling the pressure to post, to maintain my ZZ-list status in the blogging world.

I got nuthin'.

Maybe in a day or two. I'm still a bit boggled by the empty house.

Taking Leave

The morning and early afternoon in Seattle were sunny and pleasant. We had breakfast on a cafe patio and walked a few blocks to the grocery store to stock him up on ramen and Cheetos. As the clock ticked away into late afternoon, the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped. We went halfway up the hill to the parking deck and I hugged him and said goodbye and walked away alone in a cold, steady rain.

Triple digits and a too-empty house await in Tucson tomorrow. This is how whatever comes next begins.

Gone Fishin'

I am in Seattle for the week, getting the boy settled in to his new college home. There is so much goddamn good food here I could weep--but I can't stop eating long enough to sniffle, so there you go.

Posting will resume somewhere around the 20th, although the odd food photo might show up from time to time.




















Takoyaki from Wann-Izakaya. Holy shit.

In Retrospect, I Suppose the Vests Should Have Tipped Me Off

Washington state GOP House candidate Hans Zeiger, a while back:

The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion, feminist training corps. ... If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.

Future homosexual atheist pro-abortion feminist in training.

The most amazing thing to me about this is that Mr. Zeiger was actually a punk-ass teenager when he posted this to the Interwebs, rather than the bitter 60-year-old he apparently channeled while typing. And seriously, looking elsewhere for your cookies? Can Safeway give you something better than Thin Mints? I don't think so.

Friday Fulminations

Why are the media giving the out-of-control, tantrum-throwing toddler of a minister in Florida so much power? Have none of these people ever been the parent of a three-year-old? Ignore.

Speaking of ill-parented children, I am still pissed about the Johnston-spawning Palin spawn mucking up my Dancing With The Stars, as a cautious foray into the ABC message boards indicates the presence of a rabid audience that is determined to tie up their cell lines, landlines, e-mail, and any unattended phone in the vicinity to OMG VOTE 4 BRISTOL and keep her on into perpetuity. And I so wanted to see Margaret Cho eviscerate the poor little thing with a smile.

In other news of questionable taste, my high school alumni group is in a kerfuffle because a Native American historian across the street at Notre Dame noticed that the school's mascot is an Indian, and has asked the diocese of South Bend to look into making a change. My reaction was wow, I can't believe they managed to hang onto the Indian this long, but judging by Facebook comments, the larger reaction is OMG TRADITION POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BUT NOTRE DAME'S MASCOT IS A SHORT IRISH GUY AND NOBODY COMPLAINS MUSLIMS QURAN !!!!!11!!!!!!111CHEEZITS!

The school board apparently checked with the Pokagon band of the Pottowattomie a few decades ago and got the okay to use the word "Indians" and a single image of a guy in a Lakota-style headdress (in northern Indiana, go figure). I do not know if the current Pokagon leadership have been consulted--although the band's education coordinator graduated in my class and, very not surprisingly, has so far declined to weigh in on a comment thread in which a bunch of mostly white people are insisting that it's not at all disrespectful to let a white kid in fringed pajamas and face paint hop around a basketball court at halftime, or for a bunch of white kids in the stands at a football game to do the Florida State/Atlanta Braves tomahawk chop. Or that it's no more insulting to Native Americans to call our team "Indians" than it is insulting to some curiously unspecified group to have nearby Mishawaka High School call their teams "Cavemen," or, inexplicably, insulting to... Catholics? martyrs? that the New Orleans NFL team is called "Saints."

If the Pokagon really think "Indians" and the logo and the Florida State-style spear on the football helmets is a nice tip of the hat to their culture, then I don't have a problem with it. If they'd like to set new guidelines ensuring a respectful appropriation of their ethnic group and cultural artifacts, I'm all for that too (maybe retiring the old "Indians, St. Joe Indians, whoop whoop!" cheer would be a good start? I'm just sayin'). And if they decide that all the half-assed good intentions in the world about honoring some vague notion of Native American nobility and courage through a 1950s caricature of a chief just don't cut it any more and put the kibosh on the whole thing, I'm okay with that as well. They're knocking down the old school building pretty soon anyway and moving to a new campus downtown; when it's over, it's over.

In Which Arizonans Baffle Me By Being Even Stupider Than I Feared

Jan Brewer verbally stumbled, went silent and mangled her grammar during last week's televised debate.

The result of her performance, a new statewide survey indicates, is that she is even more popular.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen found 60 percent of the 500 likely Arizona voters questioned in the automated telephone survey on Tuesday said they intend to vote for the incumbent. That's up three points from a survey taken a week before the debate.

Just as soon as I finish banging my head against this nice big rock I found, I will remind myself that polls conducted via landline calls disproportionately sample old people, and that old people in Arizona disproportionately think good thoughts about reanimated corpses (see: Jan Brewer, John McCain).

Meanwhile, the Arizona Green Party is trying like mad to get rid of the Democratic vote-diluting fake candidates Log Cabin Republican Steve May recruited from a pool of homeless street performers in Tempe. I need to stop going to bed thinking the sun has just set on the stupidest day possible, because it keeps coming up the next morning, dragging even more idiocy along with it.

In Which We Confess to a Touch of Writer's Block

So much for writing every day; three and out, just in time for football season.

The calendar, despite all my protestations, has insisted on not only rolling around to September but ticking away the days faster than I could ever have imagined was possible.

Six days now until I bundle my son and several overpriced bags onto the plane for the trip to Seattle and college. Twelve days until I trudge onto the plane with a couple empty bags stuffed inside my suitcase, alone.

I do not know how people who actually lose children to things like disease and war manage to keep going. I do not know how my father survived sixteen months of my brother being deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. My son is healthy, thriving, and excited about getting on with his life. I am left living inside a Norman Rockwell painting.

I did not expect it to be this hard.

In Which Jan-Jan Does Her Best Sharron Angle

You've seen our esteemed governor's "opening statement" in the debate Wednesday night, if "..." properly qualifies as an opening statement, and while 36 hours really isn't enough time to recover from that display of fuckitude, now there's more, courtesy of the ABC affiliate in Phoenix and the Tucson Citizen.

In Governor Brewer's defense, this was a difficult situation for her, and not one that lent itself to her staff's go-to problem-solving tactic, which is, of course, to stop everything and pray. Maybe that's what she was doing in her head during the lengthy pause between the question and her declaration that it had been an interesting evening; clearly, the prayer warrior consensus went something like this:

This morning, in a stunner, Brewer announced she's not doing any more debates.

"All you guys were doing and talking were beheadings, beheadings, beheadings," the governor said. "That is something that has stuck with you all for so long, and I just felt we needed to move on."

Beheadings are such a drag, people. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Uh, Fellow Arizonans? Please Do No Forget to Vote in November.

This is the current occupant of the Arizona governor's office. She wants to come back for more.

Jesus god. Please vote Goddard in November.

Unrepentant Geekery, Part Deux *UPDATED*

Now with more explanation, below.

SOFA, bitchez.




















p = .738

My heart flutters.

Statistics have been the bane of my existence since junior year in college and the stats course that was required for my anthropology major. The class was taught by a wee, marginally insane Scotsman who claimed to be able to identify the county in which any given scotch was distilled, simply by sniffing it.

Suffice it to say that I would have done better if the class had focused on the whisky and not so much on the numbers. It got so bad that I resorted to carrying the floppy disk with my homework projects on it (this was in the long long ago time far far away, when data were stored on bendy rectangular media the size of a cd sleeve) through the library security zone and actually rubbing it on the sensor so I could say whoops, disk must've gotten bunged and take the blind F rather than letting the TA see incontrovertible evidence of my incompetence.

The prof ended up giving everyone a C instead of the Fs we deserved since failing an entire class presumably would not have reflected well on his teaching skills. The TA went on to pursue a career as a car show model. I kept my textbook and made occasional and inevitably tear-inducing attempts at using it as a reference over the years.

And now I found SOFA, and my life has changed. It is an open-source online stats package that evaluates your data and walks you through the process of selecting tests. It cranks out graphics. It produces results I can use. I understand, finally, and now I still weep, but this time in joy and relief.

Oh, science. We're on again.

The View from Here

My new window view.

After 16 years and four weeks, I got a window at work. My office is much brighter than it used to be, considering that "used to be" meant whatever light sort of filtered in over the bookcases and through the storage shelves. I thought I liked it that way, but since I spent today quite productively wrestling with statistics packages rather than morosely staring through my monitor into a black, black future, I am thinking that maybe light isn't a bad thing.

Public Service Announcement

If, like me, you regularly need terrain, elevation, and distance data at work and, like me, tend to have requests for map-based data answered with the question but what are the UTMs?, only for that answer to be, invariably, fuck if I know, a miracle has arrived. A gift from the mapping gods, who, previously unbeknownst to me, are named Zonum Solutions. They have a free online toolset that ties in with Google Maps and lets you get spot elevations, or set points to measure linear distance, or define a polygon to measure area and perimeter of spatial features. And--and, miracle of miracles--a window in the sidebar shows the UTMs for wherever you have the cursor positioned in the map.

Then, the FireShot add-on allows you to download the onscreen map (plus any lines or points you've drawn on it) into Photoshop to further muck around and save. I'm not sure about permissions for using the images you generate this way in publications, but at the least, you can generate nifty draft copies to hand to the AutoCAD guys down the hall, and make all the maps you want to hang on your wall.

Happy archaeologist.

Just another way the MaddowBlog serves the world.

Rain

The monsoon season continued to disappoint for the better part of two months. Oh, sure, clouds built up and danced around and even sometimes flashed lightning and growled thunder somewhere just out of reach, but the promised rain materialized exactly three times. Even then it didn't have the courtesy to put on a show during daylight hours when we might be able to watch the clouds with rising anticipation, waiting for the telltale gust of suddenly cool wind to cue the rain out of the wings and dance across the desert stage.

No, no, always at night, and usually in such wee hours that we were sound asleep and couldn't be roused to at least hear the water and hail tapdancing on the roof. Three summer mornings we awoke to sodden ground, crumpled programs of downed palm leaves and moraines of mesquite pods left by the rivulets of water across the yard like so much spilled popcorn kicked aside by the audience as it left, the curtain down, the show long over.

Until today. Today, finally, gloriously, afternoon clouds flung lightning to the ground close enough to knock out the power to the office, thunder rattled the windows before skidding off to the east along the curb of the Catalinas, rain slammed down in drops the size of bullfrog tadpoles. You want rain? I got yer rain right here. Rain rain rain, going on for hours now, the initial downpour replaced by steady sprinkles. The trash cans in the park down the street are all on their sides, dazed, accompanied by slightly less surprised tree branches; closer to home, my shovels have been blown across the yard, along with my buckets. Stacks of styrofoam cups that protected plants from the frost a lifetime ago, back when it still dipped below a hundred degrees here, have found new lodgings in the flower bed, the fence, the chiminea, possibly the neighbor's roof. The yard is a lake.

This is usually the time of year that the monsoon winds down, and after months of the near-daily routine of heat --> humidity --> clouds --> thunder --> SPLOOSH, we're usually about ready by now for it to be over. I wonder if it is still almost over this year, now that feels like it's just begun.

On We Go

Write every day, says my newly emerging star writer cousin. Write every day, says the wavering whispery voice that serves as my Jiminy Cricket at work, preferably about archaeology. Heh. Write every day, says my fantasy self in between doing sets of crazy weights and fending off Rachel Maddow's advances and pursuing a career that benefits humanity.

Fuck it, my kid's leaving, says dumpy tubby slacker me, and she sits staring blankly at the laptop, feeling vaguely guilty about not being more productive today and not spending more time reading to him when he was little and not playing Monopoly more often, contemplating checking the SunTran schedule to see when the next bus that might squash her head will be tooling by. Unless they're still on strike, that is; God, it's hard to keep track of these things sometimes.

I wonder if my mom felt this way as I was gearing up to go off to school. Unfortunately, at the same time she was also gearing up to pick up and move 900 miles away from South Bend to Dallas, so she may have been a bit distracted. She and my stepfather hit the road a week after graduation, my beagle sticking his head out of the back window of the old blue Pontiac as Mom waved frantically and disappeared up the hill and I stood in the driveway watching until they were gone and tried to absorb the fact that I was alone and home wasn't home any more. I looked through the windows at the empty rooms, half-heartedly rattled the locked garage door, and finally got on my bike and pedaled over to my German teacher's house to bunk for a while. A couple of weeks later I would shift back to the old neighborhood, this time to my English teacher's house down the block, where I lay on an improvised pile of cushions and blankets in the upstairs spare room and stared at the ceiling. I was two months shy of 18.

Eventually, the day after my birthday, I made my way to my dad's house in southern Illinois, riding the same bus south to Indianapolis I'd ridden a million times before, killing time during the two-hour layover, and finally taking an ancient I-V Coach on the last leg to Vincennes. Dad was there as usual to drive me across the river into Illinois, and after a week or maybe two he drove me farther west across another river to St. Louis, and I got on a plane and got off in a foreign country called Texas and maybe a couple weeks after that Mom flew me back up to Illinois, to Chicago, and after a few days she said I've got to let you go now and hugged me goodbye in the parking lot behind the dorm across the street and that was that.

I took the train home to South Bend several times, but it wasn't home any more without my mom and my house and dogs and bedroom, staying with different friends, occasionally running into acquaintances from high school with them and having to consciously remind myself that these were my former classmates too. It was far too easy to fall back into the third wheel mode I was used to from spending summers at my dad's, in the small town I'd lived in until I was nine, hanging out with old elementary school friends and trying to fit in with their high school friends but never quite having the right common frames of reference.

That was 25 years ago. I will be telling my son goodbye almost 25 years to the day after my mom told me goodbye. No matter how different the situation, the sense of unreality is the same. Home without him will not feel so much like home any more, and I will not feel so much like me.

Birthday Blog

43 years later, I guess I've done okay for myself. Birthday breakdown:

6:00 a.m.: girlfriend delivers coffee in bed (from Coffee Times, highly recommended if you find yourself driving on Speedway in the vicinity of Country Club).

7:00 a.m.: officemates show up with orange juice and champagne, respectively, and mimosas commence.

9:00 a.m.: meet my son at home and take off for Mt. Lemmon.

9:45 a.m.: arrive at Molino Canyon to find next to no water, but a few tiny tadpoles save the day.

Birthday tadpoles.

11:30 a.m.: son serves lunch of homemade coconut shrimp with (blue) lime sauce.

12:00 p.m.: first batch of cookies come out of oven.

1:30 p.m.: son accompanies me to gym.

2:30 p.m.: frozen pea application; SportsCenter.

6:00 p.m.: Girlfriend, both kids, and I hit Barrio. Tacos and beer.

sometime after that: happy collapse.

Bring on the 44th year.

Extra Time

I much prefer sports metaphors that open a little window of understanding life over sports metaphors that, well, define life.

Time is fluid in soccer. The match is supposed to last 90 minutes, but the referee may add time and allow play to continue if numerous injuries, substitutions, or other interruptions have conspired to prevent a fair full 90 minutes of competition. This makes for an agonizing experience when, say, your team has dominated possession and outplayed the other side and finally put a shot in the back of the net in the 89th minute. The clock rolls over 90:00 and you think the game's over, but because somebody's head got split open and had to be tended for a while, and somebody else needed lecturing after a yellow card, and the guys being substituted strolled off the field instead of sprinting, the referee says no, the game's not over yet. So you play on and wait and die every time the other team puts a shot on goal that takes a weird hop or deflects off a defender and you think goddammit, we had this thing won and you try to hold on until the whistle finally blows.

So now, after watching Vaughn Walker chest the ball off his own goal line and dribble circles around Prop 8 for the length of the field and fire an unstoppable shot into the top corner for a sure winner, we have extra time. Yeah, Walker put the first extra two minutes on the clock himself--the metaphor breaks down here a bit, but still--but now the 9th Circuit has added what feels like an entire additional half.

A federal appeals court decided Monday to put same-sex marriage in California on hold at least until December, interrupting the wedding plans of scores of gay couples who were hoping to exchange vows later this week.

We are told this is actually a good thing from a strategic standpoint, since it prevents the case from being prematurely kicked up to a Supreme Court that might not rule in our favor.

Loyola Law School professor Richard Hasen said Monday's order was strategically advantageous for supporters of same-sex marriage, no matter how disappointed many couples may be. If the panel had refused to place a hold on Walker's ruling, the supporters of Proposition 8 were prepared to seek a stay from the Supreme Court. The court is believed to be divided on the question of gay marriage, with Justice Anthony Kennedy considered a swing vote. A vote on a hold might have pushed the justices into taking an early position on the question.

"I think there are strategic reasons why even the most ardent supporter of gay marriage could opt for a stay," said Hasen, an expert on federal court stays. "The concern is that rushing things to the Supreme Court could lead to an adverse result [for supporters of gay marriage.] If this case takes another year to get to the U.S. Supreme Court, there could be more states that adopt same-sex marriage and more judicial opinions that reach that conclusion."

Hasen said the hold "takes the heat" off Kennedy and takes the case "off the front burner for a while."

I'm not sure how a year's extra time makes Judge Walker's findings of fact any more or less compelling to Justice Kennedy, nor am I sure how many more states are poised to adopt marriage equality instead of strengthening its prohibition. And I'm really not sure how the scoreboard showing states approving and states opposing any civil rights legislation is relevant to the Supreme Court's evaluation of the legislation's constitutionality. As much as I would love to see, say, 45 more states adopt marriage equality in the next year, that shouldn't be a necessary or even contributing condition to Anthony Kennedy deciding that the 14th Amendment really does still count, and that equality is not negotiable.

Yet again we are being told to just wait a little longer, to be patient, to let the dust settle and not pressure people in power, to see if maybe somebody somewhere in some other state will pick up the slack and do something, because if enough states do something, maybe it won't be so hard for the people who can do something federally binding to actually do it.

Hey, you've already played 90 minutes plus two, so what's two more, and two more, and two more after that? And if the other team manages to poke one in because you're exhausted and your keeper's screened? Well, you're used to losing, so no big deal, right? Right.

I Know What I Want for My Birthday

Specifically, what I want at 5 pm PDT on my birthday. To hear the California bells ringing all the way over here in the desert.

Final Stay Order

My current favorite four words in the English language, second only to here, have another beer: IT IS SO ORDERED.

You and Me Both

Another Day, Another Fail

Rachel Maddow's producer and chief blogger were in Arizona yesterday to have a look at the border fence in Nogales, talk to the Santa Cruz County sheriff, and wind down at the Tap Room at Hotel Congress in Tucson with a couple hundred Maddow fans. They brought hats to give away. I couldn't go.

The knees were too reluctant to bend in regular ways, and the wobbly legs wouldn't have managed a couple hours of standing in a crowd. *sob* I have not yet mustered the resolve to look at the blog to see the pictures.

The little building blocks making up the tower that tells me who I am are being yanked out one by one in a supremely irritating Jenga game--a knee here, an elbow there, a kid leaving home way over there, a hopeless romantic finally looking in the mirror someplace else--and pretty soon all I will have left is the irritation my father tells me I was born with, the surliness an old boss pointed out on a regular basis, a general air of death glare I am stunned to hear about every. damn. time. but which would go a long way in explaining repeated episodes of involuntary solitude over the years.

I am an object lesson in VSEPR theory. I wish I wasn't.

I'm Just Sayin'

If anybody should appreciate that basic human decency requires marriage equality, it should be a guy whose own parents could not legally marry in 26 of the states in the union when he was born. Somebody like, say, Barack Obama. I'm just sayin'.

If anybody should appreciate that separate does not mean equal, it should be a guy whose skin color would have relegated him to separate, crap accommodations and train cars and water fountains and bathrooms and hotel rooms, if he would have been allowed into one at all, a scant few years before he was born. And it should really be that guy if he grows up to be a fucking constitutional scholar. Somebody like, say, Barack Obama. I'm just sayin'.

If anybody promises to be a fierce advocate for a specific segment of society should that segment elect him to the presidency, he really ought to spend more energy fulfilling promises to the people who actually voted for him than placating people who did not and never will vote for him in the first place. He should not tepidly announce that he didn't really like Proposition 8 because it was sooooo divisive, and then trot out an aide to assure the conservative wing that he really really really doesn't think anybody afflicted by The Ghey should be allowed to get married, but should settle for a bargain-bin generic package with some of the same benefits--if individual states decide to do that; heavens, this can't be a federal matter--and be grateful for it.

If anybody pulls that kind of bullshit once, let alone over and over, he can forget about my money and my vote. I won't support someone who's happy to make me a second-class citizen.

I'm just sayin'.

More.

Loving v. Virginia was decided two months before I was born. Marriage equality continues to evolve on a timeline that parallels my own; California's Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional today, twenty years on the dot--and almost to the hour--from my own state-sanctioned opposite wedding. It was a long time ago and I was young and clueless.

Tonight I'm sifting through the reaction online and watching Maddow while nursing my stitched-up elbow. Judge Walker's findings of fact echo every argument for equality made on this blog and countless others. It's a dream ruling, written in dream language--fuck, I could have written big chunks of it, save for the inability to use the word fuck in judicial documents--and it appears to be watertight at a level I never dared hope for. In a judicial equivalent of holding the playground bully at arm's length with a hand on the forehead while he flails away impotently with fists that won't hit the mark, Walker issued a stay on his ruling that gives the H8ers until Friday to take their best shot at filing their appeals. Given the laughable lack of coherence the defense exhibited in his courtroom during testimony, I don't think he's very worried about what will happen when the case hits the Ninth Circuit.

Walker's ruling was heavily based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the same 14th that Sens. McConnell, Graham, McCain, and Kyl are so anxious to overturn that they can't help hopping from foot to foot. So boom, in one fell swoop the 14th becomes a rally point for attacking fecund Latinas and domestic-minded gays. The more interesting things get, well, the more interesting they get.

Ted Olson, one half of the team that argued against Prop 8, on Maddow tonight:

We've got to stop thinking about equality in terms of conservative or liberal. We need to start thinking about the fact that gay and lesbian citizens are our brothers and our sisters; they're entitled to equal places in our society. That should be a conservative value, it is also a liberal value, it is not something that should split us.

Von dein Mund, etc. And on we go.

And the Moral Arc of the Universe Bends a Touch Closer to Justice

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.

Details and commentary will be everywhere soon. The full decision is here.

True Colors Revealed to be, Unsurprisingly, Blindingly White

I wish I had written this, because it's so well done, but really I wish no one would ever have to write anything even approximating this in America. Racism, xenophobia, sexism, and bullheaded deliberate ignorance of our own laws, all in one tidy package courtesy of Russell Pearce and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and assorted nutters from the east and west.

Now it's not enough to cluck about illegal immigrants while pretending you're really talking about the Irish and Polish and Russian alongside the Mexicans, er, the Latin Americans, not enough to rage about oprimando el numero ocho para servicio en espanol and insist English is the official national language even though it isn't. Now all the pretense that it isn't really racism is being dropped, and it must come as such as a relief to be able to talk this way, about breeding seasons and dropping young like livestock, and stop pretending they ever thought these people were human in the first place.

"We need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that's the way nature made it. Men don't drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do." That statement was being pushed by the author of Arizona's immigration law. He's not alone.

The neat distillation of current anti-immigrant thinking was in an email spread around by State Senator Russell Pearce, and cited by The Nation's Robin Templeton in a report on the recently revived, anti-immigrant rhetoric on birthright citizenship — the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that stipulates that babies born on American soil are automatically granted citizenship.

"It's invasion by birth canal," the leader of a California anti-immigrant ballot initiative told the Los Angeles Times. The head of an anti-immigrant group in Virginia called for an investigation into "whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season."

Read the full piece for the full revolting story.

America's Pastime Is Ripping My Heart Out

Goddamn baseball. Goddamn Cubs.

The Cubs ended a bad road trip that saw Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot traded, the bullpen setting a major-league record by giving up 11 straight hits in a 12-run inning, Carlos Gonzalez becoming the fourth player in history to complete a cycle with a walk-off home run and Silva's heart episode Sunday.

Garblarghphawhargle. [/random unintelligible noises] This season can't end soon enough.

And the Immigration Blowup Continues to, Well, Blow Up

If your attention has been focused elsewhere this week--say, on cut-up and sewn-together joints, as mine has--you may have missed the news that a federal judge put the kibosh on several provisions of Arizona's new immigration law, specifically, the parts requiring cops to double as immigration agents and demand papers from anyone they stop who they think might be here illegally. A lot of people saw some very big red flags snapping in that breeze, and so, too, did judge Susan Bolton.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents. Sections barred from being enforced include:

• Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;

• Forbidding police from releasing anyone they have arrested until that person's immigration status is determined;

• Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documentation;

• Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;

• Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.

"Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked," U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

The predictable response reared its head, right on schedule.

The federal judge who halted parts of Arizona's immigration law is getting "thousands" of e-mails and phone calls, many in opposition to her ruling - and a few threatening her life.

A guy I play soccer with did not threaten the judge, but did post a status update on his Facebook asking if Bolton would give him back the $5000 he paid to go through the immigration/citizenship process when he came here from Greece. Another soccer acquaintance, this one from Poland, chimed in and said she'd like her 5k back too. Both said they don't see anything racist about SB1070 as it stands, and don't know why the hispanics think it's just targeting them instead of the Greeks and Poles and Chinese, and the Greek guy said he wouldn't mind carrying his passport and being questioned by a cop every day if that's what it takes to stop illegal immigration.

I try to avoid this kind of discussion on Facebook, so I did not post a response pointing out that (1) SB1070 has absolutely nothing to do with the legal citizenship process and thus isn't handing out fee waivers to every dehydrated Guanajuate who stumbles across the border, (2) the reason the Greek guy and Polish girl had the opportunity to fork over five grand and be welcomed with open arms in the first place is because (a) they came from countries whose quotas aren't filled and oh yeah (b) are, respectively, a software engineer and a cardiac nurse, not the (c) unskilled laborers from Latin America who would find themselves on a citizenship waiting list several generations long, and (3) if the Greek and Polish underclasses could walk here instead of having to pay for a boat or plane ride, it wouldn't just be the Mexicans and Salvadorans feeling like they have a target on their backs.

The Greek guy's wife is having a baby any day now. I wonder if Yorgos would always remember to take his passport and naturalization papers with him on the inevitable 2 a.m. runs to Walgreen's when the baby has a fever and he might not stay under the speed limit or come to a complete stop at every sign before turning. I wonder how excited he would be then to cooperate with a cop who thinks his skintone, beard, and accent mean he's not supposed to be here. I don't know why he doesn't think this could have happened to him, or why he thinks he would welcome the impingement of the freedom he shelled out all that cash to have. It's moot in any case, since Bolton's ruling ensures that he won't be faced with that situation, but I almost wish it wasn't. Because lots of shit sounds like it's a good idea, or would at least be tolerable, until it actually happens to you.

...

We have been a tad under the weather since Monday, with "under the weather" here meaning "operating with one functional limb." And it turns out that one-handed typing isn't as much fun as I'd been led to believe--who knew?--so posting will be light for a while.

Burning Questions

The pre-op check-in nurse is very nice on the phone. She goes through the vaguely familiar litany of questions--it's been six years since the last knee mishap, so some parts are foggy--starting with the actual spelling of my name, rather than the common two-letter transposition that turns me from half-Czech to all-Cuban, progressing to allergies and abnormal neurological history (seasonal and none, in order) with a side trip to consult the travel guide to East Narcotia (they all make me puke, hellooooo Advil) and finally to detailed directions on how to find the outpatient surgery department. She is adamant that the correct elevator is no more than ten paces from the door. I feel like a pirate.

One last thing, she says. Would you like a chaplain to come say a prayer with you before surgery? Hmmm. No. No, I would not. I would like a bartender to come pour me a shot of bourbon before surgery, if it's not too much trouble.

So I'm off for an overhaul on Monday morning, armed with my lucky boxers and a Sharpie for scrawling helpful notes and reminders for the surgeon all over my legs and arms. Right knee? Scope here pls. Left knee? Insert cortisone here. Right elbow? Slice and splice here pls. Left elbow? THIS IS THE ONLY FUNCTIONAL JOINT LEFT IN MY BODY NO MOLESTAR POR FAVOR KTHXBAI.

Stay tuned for the Boltgirl Frozen Peas Rehab Journal, sure to contain such exciting entries as Stationary Bike Chronicles and Honey I'm Ready for Another Gin and Tonic and Holy Fuck This Hurts.

Reunion

A few days ago I took a break from the interminable parent information sessions accompanying new student orientation at my son's university and spent an hour wandering the grounds and gardens on campus, getting to know the cool-and-mist-loving Pacific Northwest flowers and trees that are new to me. One flower in particular caught my eye, a stand of tall stalks topped with spiky balls in varying stages of bloom that shimmered purple.




















Half-bloomed, with bee; click to make life-sized.




















Fully bloomed, sans bee.

"They're wonderful, aren't they?" came a voice behind me. I turned to see an elderly man who I had not met, but whose crooked-toothed, lopsided grin was familiar.

He told me the plants were called globe thistles, and, chagrined, I glanced down at the thorn-tipped leaves and spiky stalks and said Oh, of course, a thistle, I should have looked at the foliage. These aren't like the thistles I grew up with. He smiled and told me about the globe thistles in his back yard, how they used to be covered with bees every summer, but that he hadn't seen a single bee this year and was worried that the hive had died or moved on. He asked where I was from and asked questions about saguaros and their flowers, and after a pause regarded the thistles again. "They're so fascinating, how different they look at different times. See these new ones that are all spiky and silver with a purple glow, and then these that have bloomed and are covered in almost a periwinkle?"

Yeah, I said, and then inside they have such a deep purple at the base of the blooms. Really striking. He leaned closer to a flower, examining it, and said, "You know, you're right. I'd never noticed that before. Nature is so wonderful when you take a moment to stop and just look at it. You'll always see something new," and I heard his words in his soft, measured voice and looked at his kind, gauzy eyes and gentle smile, and on that cool, overcast day a thousand miles from home I saw my grandfather again.

He wished me a good rest of my visit, I wished him luck with his bees, and he continued on to wherever he was walking. It was a good day.

Placeholder Posts? We Got 'Em!

I am freshly back from Seattle and am trying to remember what I do for a living. Please bear with us.

Oh.

Apparently the Pentagon is only trying to decide if they'll go with bright colors, neutrals, or camo for the new ghey-proof shower curtains they'll have to order if DADT is repealed. No segregation after all, Marine Commandant James Conway's musings aside.

Well, now that that's all cleared up, I'm off to the Pacific Northwest for a few days of gentle weather, good coffee, and damp green scenery. Don't trash the place while I'm gone, 'k?

Offered Without Comment.

Well, other than Jesus fucking Christ, of course.

"We think it would be irresponsible to conduct a survey that didn’t try to address these types of things. Because when DADT is repealed, we will have to determine if there are any challenges in those particular areas, any adjustments that need to be made in terms of how we educate the force to handle those situations, or perhaps even facility adjustments that need to be made to deal with those scenarios."

Wait, I guess I do have one more thing to add. Hello, military? You have already been showering, sleeping, eating, shitting, training, and bleeding next to gay servicemembers since day one at Ft. Leonard Wood, since D-Day, since fucking Valley Forge. And your gay brothers- and sisters-in-arms have somehow managed to resist throwing themselves at the giant throbbing hunk of man/woman you apparently represent and just done their jobs. So you really don't need a fucking survey about how the delicate sensibilities of a Marine tank crew are going to be offended if their gay TC doesn't shuffle off to the gays-only rack at night. And you don't need to think about gay-only racks, showers, messes, or anything else in the first place.

If you want to segregate somebody, segregate the dumbasses who think they need to worry about dropping the soap into their own gobshite stupid facilities, and leave the professionals alone.

Because I Have Far Too Much Time

I think this template. The previous one with all the leaves was just too busy.

DOMA: Quick Hit

It will take a while to read through the details, but the short version is that a federal judge in Massachusetts found DOMA (well, specifically, Section 3 of DOMA) unconstitutional.

To further divide the class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning. And where, as here, “there is no reason to believe that the disadvantaged class is different, in relevant respects” from a similarly situated class, this court may conclude that it is only irrational prejudice that motivates the challenged classification.149 As irrational prejudice plainly never constitutes a legitimate government interest, this court must hold that Section 3 of DOMA as applied to Plaintiffs violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Both the Fifth and 14th Amendments are cited as being violated, which bodes well. However, the Tenth is cited as well, and that gives me pause. If states' rights to define marriage are being held as the major constitutional tenet being violated by DOMA, I am forced to (1) remember that I live in Arizona, and (2) conclude that my state's reaction will probably involve (a) passing a second, we-double-dog-mean-it marriage amendment, (b) criminalizing all non-procreative sex acts for people under 65, and possibly (c) seceding from the Union when the state legislature realizes suing the Feds to remove the 5th and 14th amendments from the Constitution ain't gonna fly, and it's the only way to avoid having to recognize the marriages of Tucsonans who might flock to Cedar Rapids for summer wedding junkets.

Another take on the potential Tenth Amendment can o' worms is at FireDogLake. Much reading to do!

Zzzzzzzz

There is something to be said for the lazy days of summer, and perhaps more to be said when such a day hits a level of lazy that is magical enough to knock our neuroses clean outta the park. About 7:30 last night, as we lounged on the couch having just wrapped up The Godfather and carryout pad thai, the girlfriend wondered if we should have had a party or something for the 4th, thrown a token hamburger on the grill, asked some people over to watch fireworks from the roof, anything. Nah, I said, not at all.

The Fourth has been a big deal to me for a long time, wrapped up in childhood memories of my grandfather and homemade ice cream and band concerts in the park and watermelon and fireworks, and more recent memories of my personal coming-out anniversary.

This year? Pfft. I hung out with my girlfriend and my son, lollygagging in the breeze from floor fans that made the hot day tolerable, sucking on Otter Pops, catching up on classic American films all of us managed to miss the first time around due to either not being born yet (him) or being busy with other things, apparently (girlfriend and me). Rocky, Godfather, pad thai, family, relaxing in the present instead of dutifully hauling out the memories of the past.

It was a good day.

Monsoon, Mon-not-soon-enough

The cicadas are in overdrive. Stepping from an air-conditioned office into the parking lot briefly feels good, like a basket of warm towels fresh from the dryer feels good, but the muzzy warm blanket feeling quickly cedes to holy fuck it's hot oppression. Clouds pause at the mountaintops, think about it for a while, and then text all their friends and it's a flash mob of cumulonimbus goodness spilling from the Catalinas over the edges of the basin, promising globs of dark gray there, and over there, and especially over there, rolling over and mercifully blocking the late-afternoon sun, but not yet right here overhead. The mob teases with a few flashes of lightning in the distance and some puffs of promising wind moist with creosote and water on soil, flings a sprinkle of droplets against the window, and then calls it a day.

Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we roast, and schedule hanging up the laundry for sometime after midnight when it might drop below 100 degrees, and glance up at the single cloud milling aimlessly on the horizon and hope its friends get their shit together a little more productively today.