Want! It is apparently out of stock now--I mean, why wouldn't it be?--but I bet the elves are hard at work cranking out new ones at the Chinese North Pole as we speak.
This does not happen often--although I suppose the degree of frequency is entirely dependent on your perspective, vis-a-vis whether you're inside my head or a hapless bystander on the outside--but when it does it sucks. It's eerily reminiscent of the early '80s, specifically, nights on which I would get totally fucking stuck on my math homework, stuck to the point of swearing I could feel a physical barrier inside my brain that kept all the knowledge and capability that just had to be in there from spilling forward into an area where I could access it.
Today it is the same nice Hohokam site as yesterday, still sitting scattered in the database, resolutely flipping me off on every attempt I make to pull up a chair and be friendly, rebuffing my offers to buy it lunch or maybe just a drink, before it goes back to the Times crossword and its cup of decaf. I don't want a commitment or even a second date here. I just want to talk.
Specifically, I would like to know what people living there were doing round about the year 1000, why they made the tools they did, what all they had to give up to the people at West Branch in order to acquire some lousy brown and slightly radioactive chert the West Branchers were sitting on, and if there was any real reason behind the changes they made in their technological behaviors from generation to generation, or if they were just bored or all like fuck that shit, no way I'm doing this the way my old man did, and by the way, did you notice we have to make everything using these goddamn rocks? And you want how much, again, for that lousy-ass chert that makes me glow green at night? Because I can get it way cheaper in Nogales, you scamming bastard, and la migra can't do a goddamn thing about it because they don't fucking exist yet.
Uh, because I kinda need to know these things, and kinda need to write a report about them by... 5:00 today? In! Trouble!
The only possible way this could have been better is if it had been rendered in claymation by Nick Park, a la Chicken Run, with chubby turkey feet kicking in the hopper and the turkey worker giving Palin a giant toothy grin as the odd feather floats down into her hair and worried turkeys mill and mutter in the background. As it is, not bad. And here we were in the desert saying it hadn't felt much like the holidays yet! Who's hungry?
Also noted: yet again, Governor Palin makes specific individual references to her sons while blithely lumping her daughters as "the kids." Track's Stryker brigade is safe, or fairly safe, in Eye-rack, and Trig is happy and healthy. Oh, and school's going fine for the kids--perhaps her own girls, perhaps all of Alaska's children? Does she remember their names, or is she afraid of accidentally calling them Broomstick and Purple? Who knows.
This is the Bush reproductive healthcare legacy in action. Good luck with your adult lives, kids. And especially you, little girl.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) easily won a vote to remain chairman of a key committee today and will stay in the Democratic caucus despite his high-profile criticism of President-elect Barack Obama and his support of Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that "Joe Lieberman is a Democrat. He's part of this caucus."
Joe Lieberman is officially a ConnecticutForLiebermann-crat. If you've been busily blotting out your memories of the god-awful campaign season, like Harry Reid apparently has, Liebermann also stumped around the country for John McCain, whispered corrections into John McCain's ear, touted John McCain as the best hope for America, agreed that it really is a good question to ask if Barack Obama is a Marxist, and, oh, fretted out loud about the potential for America to be destroyed if Barack Obama, Democrat, were to be elected president. Joe Liebermann has also been a cheerleader for the Iraq war from Day One, and never hesitated to remind us that he believed John McCain has always been right on that account and Barack Obama has always been wrong.
In other words, Joe Liebermann has pretty much been functioning as a Republican in the Senate for a while now, so the Democratic leadership's worries about not having a 60-seat majority have been little more than insipid, poorly written theatre. Oh noes, they said, what if we offend Joe and he defects to the other side? News flash: he did that a while ago, propping up George Bush and talking shit about the Democratic presidential candidate to anyone who would listen. And your response to that is to say we need unity and all the Democrats we can find? Well, yeah, but this guy has not been interested in either unity or party discipline since Ned Lamont beat him in the CT Democratic primary way back when, so you need to aim a little higher when it comes to operationalizing your ideals and a little lower when it comes to giving somebody a much-needed kick in the ass out the door.
Obama seems to have wanted to keep that national security gavel in Joe's hands. Swell. Next!
This has been going on for two weeks now, and--amazingly--there has not been a single letter to the editor complaining about people shoving their bedroom behavior either in our faces or down our throats, whichever metaphor you prefer, in half-page stories in the Sunday paper that teh childrenz might get their hands on. Straight people do have the right to have relationships and draw up contracts (apparently even more than once if it doesn't work out the first or second or third time) but their constant need to parade their orientation to the rest of us is just so icky. Well, what else do you expect from the liberal Socialist media?
Good omens: Both Tiffani and Marc were married before
Because nothing is a better omen of future success than past failure. Go, straight people, go!
Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.● At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written, "Let's hope someone wins."
● Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray-painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
● Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted, "Assassinate Obama," a district official said.
● University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
● Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
● Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
● A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on Election Night by four white men who shouted, "Obama!"
● In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying, "Now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
Seriously? Seriously, what the fuck? "Let's hope somebody wins" a fucking assassination pool? I am at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to dealing with drooling mouthbreathers like this, much as I am at a disadvantage in dealing with anti-gay bigots, because I don't understand them, and by don't understand I mean I don't have the first fucking clue of how people can actually think this way in 2008. I'm not blind to their existence--that's not the part I'm having trouble conceptualizing--but I can't begin to wrap my brain around what it means to think that way about fellow human beings. Like to the point that you think the world is ending and hope that a man, a husband and father, will be murdered just because he's black and happens to hold the highest office in the country. I freely admit to having biases of my own--Mormons are tops on that list these days--but I don't wish death and destruction on them, and still manage to evaluate individual people as people first, with my main criteria being do you treat other people well and are you honest and reliable? Utter vitriol and hatred are things I reserve for individuals I know personally and for whom I have indisputable evidence of being shithead blackguards.
Hanging effigies? Burning crosses? Leaving boxes of shit on somebody's doorstep? Encouraging little kids to chant for a murder? All because... the black guy won. And/or you suspect the person you're targeting voted for the black guy for president. All across the fucking country.
Way to go, America. At least I'm not just fixated on the gay thing when I get depressed about the state of the nation now.
That last bullet: "...in order to win this battle, there may have to be certain legal rights recognized for unmarried people such as hospital visitation so opponents in the legislature will come away with something." In other words, in order to take the big important rights away from the faggots and dykes we might need to cave and let them see each other in the hospital, but Xenu knows that if we could get away with it, we'd eliminate that right too. Hospital fucking visitation. It's been my own personal whipping boy, the reductio ad hospitalum bandied about by people who might not reduce our relationships to a sex act but most definitely are happy to reduce the huge sphere of marital rights and responsibilities to the single issue of ICU access. And now we learn that it's the fucking shriveled little carrot the Mormons grudglingly consent to dangle in front of us even as they prepare to whack us with the stick.
Kiss my giant lesbian ass, Mormon church. You forfeited any claim on my civility when you decided to launch a crusade to strip me and mine of full citizenship in this country.
Connecticut voters could have opened the door to ending gay marriage last week by voting for a constitutional convention to amend the state's constitution, but the measure failed.Peter Wolfgang, the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, a gay-marriage opponent, acknowledged that banning gay weddings in Connecticut will be difficult but vowed not to give up. He condemned the high court's decision as undemocratic.
Peter, sweet cheeks? Do we need a refresher course on what democracy means? See that bit about people voting not to amend the constitution to prevent gay marriage? The judge's decision reflects the contents of that constitution, which the voters didn't want to change. And that is... constitutional democracy in action.
ORIGINAL POST: Thank you, Connecticut, and now you should probably steel yourselves for the inevitable onslaught from the rabid religious right. Many gay and lesbian couples are planning ceremonies Wednesday. The judge ruling followed a historic decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The high court ruled 4-3 on Oct. 10 that same-sex couples have the right to wed rather than accept a civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples. Yes. We. Can.Gay marriage is legal in Connecticut now that a judge has cleared the way. New Haven Superior Court Judge Jonathan Silbert ruled at a brief hearing Wednesday morning that gay and lesbian couples now may pick up marriage license forms at town and city clerks' offices statewide.
