No on 8 Protests!

Hey, guys, I'm a half hour late for most of you (our area is being silly and not starting 'til noon PST), but...

Go protest! If you've got a little time, get out there--there are national (actually, INTERNATIONAL) protests today starting 10:30 am, PST, against Prop 8 and the repeal of gay rights, and they're in every state. 300 cities.

You can look for your nearest protest location here:

http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/

Show the love! Love to all of you!

Yay!

Meme time!

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for?

Answer me, then post to your own blog and see how many crimes you get accused of.

Love.

Soooo behind on NaNoWriMoing. SO behind. Alas! It'll get done or it won't, I suppose. At least I finally caught up on a little work, today. Some cleaning (Chris was a wonder of clean), errands.

Anyway, in case you haven't seen this, here's Keith Olbermann's comment on Prop 8. It was really beautiful and I cried a lot.

Transcript and video link here.

Time to stop crying/start thinking, I guess.

So, on a personal level, how do we go about petitioning to have domestic partnership benefits extended to different-sexed couples? Lobbying? Ballot measure? Lawsuit? Our DP from Berkeley isn't recognized by the rest of the state, and I don't want to lose my teeth but I don't currently wish to have any association with the institution of marriage as it stands, either. If rights of union are being ghettoized, I'd rather live in the slums.

And with regards to making the institution more noble: Can we counter-amend?

For instance:

Repeal Sec. 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution ("Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."), and replace it with (OR) amend Sec. 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution to read, "In accordance with the 14th Amendment of the United States constitution, viz that 'No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,' the right to marry in California shall not be abridged on basis of race, ethnicity, creed, color, religion or religious background, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, or political affiliation. Marriage shall be hereby defined as between any two competent and consenting adults. In accordance with Article IV of the Constitution of the United States, viz 'Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State,' all marriages performed in other states, regardless of the identity of the parties, shall be valid and recognized in California, and will accord all associated rights."


How does that sound? I'd vote for it.

And should we wait a few years? In 2000 (during the primaries) Prop 22 made it 61%/39%, and Prop 8 only made it 52%/48%, this year, which is a hell of a lot of progress (maybe I should try to take hope from that). Maybe waiting would mean more young people will be of age and voting and more hostile people would be, um. Not voting. Plus, presidential election years draw more of the whole population, esp. more young people.


EDIT: I'm refusing to get my hopes up, but: there are apparently in the neighborhood of several million absentee votes yet to be counted. Absentee voting used to be the domain of the elderly and invalid, but it has also recently become (at least here) the best option for getting the young and forgetful, lazy, overworked, or travel-prone to remember to vote. So that's a whole lot of wiggle room that could go either way. Will keep you updated if I hear more. Though you probably will hear it, too.

A ringing endorsement, at 4% and holding

All decisions for who will be allowed to marry at all must apparently be determined by whom a clergyman must marry. Since they cannot make their own autonomous decisions about whom among the legally allowed they will perform a marriage ceremony for, we'll have to make it uniformly unobjectionable to them.

Clearly, because clergy could be forced to marry people outside of their own faith, we must by 4% pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit anyone of different faiths marrying. In fact, all intermarriage between specific congregations should probably be forbidden.

Furthermore, atheists and agnostics must be forbidden the right to marry at all, even civilly at the county registrar office, because we can't allow them to force religious leaders to marry them, either.

We might have to eliminate civil marriage ceremonies altogether, just to be sure they don't open the door to anything else problematic.

Who knew that a priest, preacher, minister, etc. has NEVER made the decision to deny ANY couple their services in marriage? Every 90's sitcom with a teenage couple getting assessed (and sometimes denied) by their religious advisor for marriage suitability was wrong, apparently. And when my best friend and her fiance (now husband) had to go through the same thing, the pastor must have just been pulling their legs, seeking to pretend (if only for a moment) that as a professional, he had the right to decide how to apply his services.

Maybe we should revisit that 1948 bit of activism by judges, too, and by 4% make a constitutional amendment to undo what they did when they legalized different-raced marriages, too. There are surely still religious leaders who are uncomfortable about being forced to do that, day in and day out. But how they have suffered in silence!

This is becoming complicated. Perhaps we ought to just install some kind of broader protection for them. A.. a kind of wall between religion and politics, a... a separation, if you will.....



Edit: In case you're wondering just which rights have been taken away, here, this is a good comparison of marriage and domestic partnerships. The rule: never get sick, injured, or moved over state lines. Maybe better just not to travel at all.

Oh, and!

I remembered, I remembered!



John Charles Daly urging everyone to go vote. 50+ years ago. But, still... It's lovely. That man makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Picture Post!

Okay, because I'm behind, this is a quickie.

Me at Halloween. I was a black-and-white fairy, and I made my wings with cardboard, craft paper, and watercolor. I was supposed to be wearing white gloves, to make me monochrome, but I forgot for the pictures. :(

Here's one of Christina (who was also a fairy!) and I together.

And here is a fresh picture of Fred!




Kitten pictures should be seen, too:

Arthur cuddling preciously.

Arthur for some reason suffering a feather boa.

And Alex being a wonderful shlunk.

And for ultimate sweetness, the two of them cuddling with an illegal amount of cute.



Awwwwww...

I also want to pimp my knitting. First sock, woohoo!

Also, I think I am NaNoWriMoing. ...What? It can be a verb...


Edit: Holy crap, I don't want to do work today. o.o I have to practice up for choir (don't want to), I should start scanning receipts for work finances (nope), do a loooot of stuff in the database (meh), clean (bah), EDIT EDIT: AND LAUNDRY... Gotta' bring the houseplants I set out to get rained on back in.

What do I want to do? Put on Tin Man or Reefer Madness and knit the next sock. And write, maybe.

Crap crap crap.

Maybe if I make some tea, I will be inclined to clean up a little bit. At least bring the plants in, set some different ones out. Then, if I slack or craft, I won't feel too bad.

This is my plan, for now.

The Tale of Fred, the new mascot.

So I was making copies for work at The Kinko's, Thursday, and as I was crossing the parking lot by their dumpster, there was a pathetic scrap of plant on the ground.


(This is a recreation of finding him. That's my kitchen floor, instead of the dirty asphalt.)

This is a close-up of his mangled-ness.



Now, his lower end was rotted black. His top end was rotted black. In the middle, he was all wilted, one of his leaves was torn, and I suppose the vine fell off or was plucked off. When I found him, he'd been stepped on and dropped and just hadn't even made it into the dumpster when they went to throw him away. I said, "Oh no!" And he said his name was Fred, and I felt very sad for him. And a little upset.

To me, this is the best analogy for throwing away a piece of pothos:

The screw fell out of my glasses. I have the screw. I have the screwdriver. I have the glasses. I will throw them away, because they are broken.

A pothos is the easiest plant in the world to save. You cannot kill a pothos. If you kill a pothos, you can make more pothos plants from the corpse. If you have a live pothos, you can make an exponential number of pothos. Four and a half years ago, Chris and I had one small pothos plant. Now, that plant has vines that are 8-10 feet long, and they're only that short because I kept cutting pieces from them to make new pothos. (There's one in the living room that's very bushy, there's one in the study/office thing there's another one in the music/craft room along with The Mama plant, there's one at Christina's...) If a limb breaks or rots off, you cut off the bad bits, you snap off a couple of leaves to leave the little root nubs open, and you stick the ends in a glass of water. And then it gets new roots, and you stick it in the dirt again. It just does.

So I rearranged my purse and my pack of copies and I picked up this wilty dirty thing, and walked home. When we got there, I knew he'd be my mascot. So I gave him a bath, to freshen him and get the footprints off.

I trimmed the rotted parts off.

I popped off a leaf.

And then I stuck him in a glass of water.

Here is a picture.

Looking very snazzy in his nice glass in the bathroom!

And here is a close-up of the places his roots will grow.


I will keep taking pictures of him every few days. He already looks a lot better--his leaves aren't curling and wilted anymore, and he looks full of Life. He's scarring over at the top end, but that's to be expected, I suppose.

So please, root him on (as he ROOTS hahahahaetc). He just needs a little Love.