Bridge School Concert!

So I have some of the worst blisters on my feet I've ever had. I strained my knees badly, and my left one may have Something Wrong with it (I'm not sure if it's all because of my shoes, the way we were sitting on the ground, or the little spill I took off the curb in the dark on the walk back to the hotel). I either caught a bug or so upset my body with my food habits for the weekend that it was behaving like it's been poisoned, so I'm weak as a kitten, more dehydrated than I can ever recall being (incl. when I've had real live food poisoning), and very food wary. I can't walk without listing to port or starboard, and I'm spending my day sipping bubblegum flavored generic pedialyte and cuddling my cats.

But I had an absolutely amazing time. (Copious links to lyrics and youtube to follow.)

I spent a lot of time bawling, first of all (but that usually tends to constitute a good time, for me): Death Cab for Cutie did one called "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." Lyrics. Video/music. I'd never heard it before, but that didn't stop me completely melting down. And Sarah McLachlan did "Adia" (lyrics, video, only she played her own piano) and "Angel" (lyrics, video). Adia is one of my favorite songs, and Angel is on the ASPCA ad that always turns me into a sobbing wreck. So, weeping.

This concert is almost always entirely acoustic (well, amplified, but with no electric instruments), and live, and no session musicians, etc, so it really shows a very raw, sincere version of what's going on. If someone was mostly the result of sound engineering and multiple tracks and so on, it would be evident. But everyone was amazing.

I didn't take notes the whole time, this time, since I figured it'd be better to just relax and enjoy, though I did scribble down a bit of lyric if I wanted to be able to find the song again. Everyone did several songs. Neil Young did Sugar Mountain and one or two others at the beginning, as per usual, which was great. Then Band of Horses, whom I enjoyed, and Cat Power and the Dirty Delta Blues Band (she did one that was "Lord, Help the Poor and the Needy" video) that was quite good and even funkier than in that link, as well as CCR's "Fortunate Son" *with* Neil Young). Then Death Cab for Cutie, who did several, incl. "Brothers on a Hotel Bed" (lyrics, video), "Grapevine Fires" (lyrics) which pleased the apocalypse-lover in my soul, and the one I mentioned before.

Wilco was amazing, and started our politics for the night (other than the frequent admonitions from the video screens to vote). Jeff Tweedy, their lead (who's starting to look like a cross between Ewan McGregor-circa-Velvet Goldmine and Harvey Keitel--EDIT: this is a good thing, btw), said, "I'm wearing a flag pin," very gruffly. The audience mixed giggles and cheers for this, and the close-up showed he was, indeed, wearing one. "I know you people in this Anti-American state can't understand that, but I'm proud of my country." It wasn't entirely clear whether he was scolding the Bay Area for real or spoofing the recent rhetoric (though we were guessing the former). And then he amended, "...Especially this state. No on 8!" So we screamed ourselves silly while he started playing "California Stars" (lyrics, video). (EDIT: 8 is the appalling constitutional amendment on our ballot this year, trying to remove the rights of same-sex couples to marry. So Tweedy = win.) They also did "War on War," "Forget the Flowers" (<3), and a new one that I really liked, and if I find out what it's called once it's out, I'll mention. And he did another one I don't know, and said, "Take that, Norah." More on that came out later.

EDIT!: Got a note saying that the one they were feuding over was "Jesus Etc." from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and (intriguingly) that the new one didn't have a name yet. Hmmm. Also, I gotta' say, they kinda' got the short stick in this entry--I really, really loved their set. We've got a couple of their albums, but other than Mermaid Avenue (which was them with Billy Bragg doing Woody Guthrie stuff), which I do love, I didn't really know any of their music, hadn't pursued it. I'd heard California Stars in the car on the way to the concert, and I enjoyed it a lot, but I'm going to have to start listening to them more, now. They absolutely won me over. (Seeing people live can be the very thing.) The new untitled song they did was actually what pushed me over from enjoying my night to having a blast, and I was probably bugging my blanket mates by dancing pretty wildly in place. And singing along. (What? I sing along to songs I don't know. And I'm good at it.) It had a kind of.. almost early Beatles-ish sensibility, but with this great drive and momentum and menace. WE WANTS IT, PRECIOUS.

They were followed by Sarah McLachlan.

I didn't know much Sarah McLachlan, but I hoped she'd do Adia (one of my absolute favorite songs), Better than Ice Cream, and Angel (all of which she did--plus Building a Mystery, two brand new ones, and a few more I didn't know but that were good--one is "World on Fire"). She called for a singalong to Better Than Ice Cream, and I was the only one near me who joined in (Come on, people! SING, DAMNIT!). I wasn't looking to be impressed, but she was incredible--emotional and intense and sincere, and better--better--than in studio recordings. I was really wowed. She played solo, her own guitar and piano, with only occasion simplified changes in the piano for Adia. I have a whole lot more respect for her, now. (And, like I said before, she made me cry a whole lot.)

Norah Jones I sacrificed a lot of because I didn't think I'd safely be able to pick my way across hundreds of bodies in the dark on the lawn back to our spot, and I got scolded away from hanging around on walkways. But she was playing guitar and piano, and had a banjo player and an upright bass player (both women), and they did a really wonderful, funky set with some old, old covers. It was really cool, and I'm sorry I missed so much of it. I did catch enough to know she did "Sinkin' Soon" and "Sunrise." And I caught her explaining her feud with Wilco--she and hers had been planning to do their favorite Wilco song at the concert, and Wilco went ahead and did it themselves (hence "Take that, Norah!"). And she said, "But we've been practicing and practicing and practicing, so we're going to do it anyway." Afterwards she said, "Take that, Tweedy!" She got a lot of catcalls. She is really, really cute.

Jack Johnson was the same way as McLachlan--incredibly talented, clearly not suffering from being away from a studio, playing his own instruments, etc, and really, really mellow (he told us he hadn't played in a few months because he'd been with his kids, and that one of them peed on him yesterday--that, in fact, the jeans he was wearing still had pee on them). He got razzed by his pianist for that. They were all really excellent musicians, very together, very clean. It was absolutely lovely. He did my favorite of his, too, "Breakdown." (Lyrics, video.) He also did "Better When We're Together," "Banana Pancakes," "Times Like These," "Brushfire Fairytales," "Flake," "Go On," "Upside Down," "Mudfootball," and one more that might have been a Neil Young song, actually. He got a random big cheer, because the camera did a closeup of the soundhole on his guitar. There was one of the red white and blue drawn portraits of Obama's face.

And then Neil Young closed things off. (He got extra love for his "Hippies for Obama" pin.) He did "Lonesome Me," "Mother Earth," "The Needle and the Damage Done" (a favorite!!), "Heart of Gold" (ditto), "Old Man" (also ditto), and an amazing cover of the Beatles' "Day in the Life". Then everyone came out for "Comes a Time." I might be forgetting a couple, too.

Conclusions:
* A lot of these people are way better than I realized.
* Acoustic does fantastic by some normally non-acoustic people.
* I love hippie musicians.
* Mountainview wants to kill me.
* I love it anyway.

(If you're curious, this was last year's post.)

Mountain View, here we come!

We're going to the Bridge School Concert, again, this year!

So what's that?

It's a concert whose proceeds go to the Bridge School, a school that works with severely disabled children. For $40, we can sit on the grass a mile away, but the screens and speakers are good, and it's an FT of music. The line up this time (since ZZ Top backed out, and Josh Groban and Smashing Pumpkins'll only be there Sunday) is this (copied from the Bridge School site):

• Neil Young
• Wilco
• Jack Johnson
• Death Cab for Cutie
• Norah Jones
• Cat Power
• Sarah McLachlan (Saturday only)
• Band of Horses (Saturday only)

Last year, the concert started mid-afternoon, and went until after 1 am. Neil Young and his wife, Tom Waits with the Kronos Quartet, My Morning Jacket, Jerry Lee Lewis, Regina Spektor, Tegan and Sara, Metallica, and John Mayer all played (and Eddie Vedder and Flea had backed out). Everyone did about a half dozen songs each, very little downtime, and it was really, really fantastic. So we're looking forward to this year much!

I'll let you know how it was when we get back. :)

Love!

Oh, please do this.. I'd do it for you...

I love this game. My galpal Raechel and I started playing a version of this long distance through media mail. (There's an increasingly elaborate story about a goat in Mexico, my missing toes, and being framed for crimes that keeps developing every time we send a cheapy notebook back and forth. Good times.) So I about had a happy conniption when I saw this meme.

So:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or ever) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your blog and see what your friends come up with.

Love!

Chinese Guitar

I've got a certain fascination with the apocalyptic. Urban decay, destruction of populations, reclamation by nature... Anything that suggests it has a hold on me. Neighborhoods in Detroit, where trees grow through abandoned houses, gardens gone feral... I tell my ficus, have always told it, stories about other ficus trees that grew so big and so strong that they pushed down walls and broke open rooves, stories about forests eating cities and birds nesting in office buildings. I tell it to help it grow.

This isn't necessarily healthy, but it's calming, in its way. When we're all gone, or much reduced, it'll all get on without us.

Is it horrible to be so soothed by these images? To take so much comfort in the quiet of them?

Models I've seen even say we couldn't actually reverse the path our planet is on--that we've passed tipping points, or that we'll at best be beyond all hope of return within a handful of years. The best we can hope for is to slow it down, soften the blow a little, but our hope as a species is fairly marginal, certainly here, certainly in the long term. I try not to get too alarmist about it, and I try to raise false hope, because being nihilist tends to put a damper on potentially-helpful action (models have been wrong before), but with every disaster, I feel like the planet has just had enough and is trying to shake us off. Wonder if maybe we should stop trying and let it. We overcame the carrying capacity, so now we have severe overpopulation, where hordes of people are just starving more slowly, starving longer, rather than perishing outright. Plagues knocked us back, and we came up with vaccines, or at least preventative care. All of our innovation "revolutions" that have saved so many individuals--none of whom I could have picked out to give back to the earth, none of whom I could deny this chance at living--have pushed us further and further beyond the point of hope as a species. Now we have wasting, slow, incurable things, stronger things, demons of easy momentum that have crept up so gently that we pretend we couldn't have known.

It's very strange to think about.

It's been coming up a lot, lately. Minor disasters (like the collapse of the American or World economy) have been a frequent topic around the homestead--what will we feed the cats on? Will we be able to stake out a piece of earth sufficient to feed us? How much rainwater could we collect, if irrigation fails, how much capacity do we need to be able to get through summer? Seeds?--but the larger ones, too, the looming unfathomable.

Strangely enough, getting to talk about it at the conference was very bracing. Most people don't want to think about it, so we don't get much chance, and maybe it just served to focus the attention. I'm not sure.

Everything else seems a little trivial, comparatively, I have to say. Saddling up and working, or even going to choir tonight, seem like strangely over-normal activities, so they're hard to comprehend just now. (Maybe it's a good sign that I'm at least keeping up with the more mindless activities, like doing memes.) But maybe I'm just tired.

I don't want it to happen. Of course I don't. But I feel... pretty good. Calm, and as prepared as I might be to give it a good try, and if I fail, then I made that good try.

I try to trick myself into thinking Chris and I have got a better chance than we might--we have some previous skill with growing food without petroleum, with making clothing, with salvaging old and ruined things into useful things, with living with very little, and I just have to work on making fire without Implements to get the basics covered. I even fancy myself having a better immune system, from not beating it back with antibiotics, not overwashing, courting minor illness for the sake of antibodies. But I know things are a lot more random than that. And what we have helps after the fall, not during.

Maybe other people make it and I don't. Maybe I make it, and others I love don't. Maybe everyone but the already disadvantaged do, as is often the case in disasters. Maybe no one makes it at all.

But at that point, I don't suppose anyone will much mind.

Hm.

I'm preempting Chris here and posting one of our songs from the most recent set we put together. It was too big to load on our soundclick page, because it's some six and a half minutes, but I got a file sharing account. It can be downloaded here: Paper Cats, "Chinese Guitar." It's for one of these kinds of images, and it's very sweet and gentle. Chris wrote the guitar part, and I started humming an old kind of melody over it. He asked for the image, and I wrote him the lyrics for it, with a little input. That's my flute in the beginning, trying to sound much older than it actually is (...come to think, it's actually 16 or 17 years old, but that's still not much). And it's his Chinese-made Ibanez arch-top, Rosebud, playing the lead.

Here are the lyrics.



I've still got this old Chinese guitar
from the days long, long before
the breakers all gave, and swept all away
the ways of long before

Oh, a chinese guitar
my old chinese guitar.

I sat alone on a cliff 'bove the waves
'til the day that you found me
I was play'n' something old, something sweet, something low,
looking down over the sea

past my chinese guitar
my old chinese guitar.

You had this banged up old flute in your hand
And said, "Who could ask for more?
She's tired but she's fine, and the sound's pretty full
though she sticks at six and four

Maybe she'd sing with your guitar
with your old chinese guitar."

"Old man," I said, "you sure come a long way,
'cause I ha'n't seen you before.
Been watching for years, but what else would I do?
Been waiting by this shore,

with my chinese guitar.
Playing chinese guitar."

So I took you down where the town used to be
and we found an old lawnchair
Put it up next to mine 'neath that sweet twisting tree
with shade for us to share

(Bridge)

Now we play up here, to the sea, to the birds,
but I don't think they much listen
But maybe there's someone else out there somewhere
with a nine-string mandolin

who'll hear my old guitar
my old chinese guitar.

See, I've still got this old Chinese guitar
From the days long before
The wood's cherry red, there's a dent in the side,
but the sound carries pretty far...

(Bridge)



(Pretty picture of a tree growing through the rotted paper of an abandoned book depository.)

Love.

Meme-down.

Now with more self-promotion! (Yes, there is an upload of *us* doing a song, crazy times, people.)

I forgot to point out that at the time of last night's posting, we'd been up and moving for 24 hours, on three hours bad sleep. Our flight left Pittsburgh 6 am EDT, so we had to leave the hotel at 4 am EDT, so we were going to wake up at 3:30 am EDT. Except neither of us slept well, and after going to bed at midnight, we woke up at more like 2:40 am. That is, we got up at 11:40 pm the night before, California time.

One decent night's sleep was not adequate to fix that. But at least it's a start. I can at least, now, meme.

Put the iPod/iTunes/whatever on random, and answer these questions in order with the titles of the songs that come up.

I did this twice, so I'm adding a couple from the second time around if they were fun, too. Trying to give you most of the youtube links, at least, and (as I said) one real live download.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY? "Somewhere, A Place for Us," Tom Waits. (..Hm.)
Alt: "Send in the Clowns," Judy Collins

2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF? "Entr'Acte," Cabaret. (Heeeee, okay, I really like that.)
Alt: "Loser," Beck (as part of "The Alternative Polka," Weird Al Yancovic) - both fun.

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? "Come on, Eileen," Dexy's Midnight Runners. (Not sure what that even means. "You in that dress" is fun.)

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY? "Friday Night," Lily Allen. (Actually, I guess this works--I still feel the weekend.)
Alt: "I Love L.A.," Randy Newman - which is actually perfect, too--I'm so disoriented I don't know where I am.


5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? "Hallelujah," Jeff Buckley. (?)

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? "Listen to the Band," Meredith Ochs (but I linked the original Monkees).
(!!! This is actually true! This song is something I've clung to since I was about 13.)

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? "24," Jem. (But.. but I'm 25.)
Alt: "She's Electric," Oasis (Yay!)

8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU? "Michigan Blackhawk," the Monkees. (Is that like a black sheep?)
Alt: "Natural One," Folk Implosion (Awesome.)

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? "Straight Shooter," the Mamas and the Papas. (..okay, I don't drink *that* much.)

10. WHAT IS 2 + 2? "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." (I love this question. Why couldn't "24" have come up for this one?)


11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND? "Dreams," Fleetwood Mac

12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE? "Step Into My Office, Baby," Belle and Sebastian. (I don't use acronyms online. If I did, I would say LOL! OMFG!)

13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY? "Ben," Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. (That's... really pathetic. ::cries:: )


14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? "Take on Me," the A-Has. (Not sure what that means.)
Alt: "Jealous Guy," Youssou N'Dour (but linked John Lennon) (Ooooh, kinky)

15. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE? "Little Boxes," Malvina Reynolds (with the opener to Weeds, since it's all I could find). (This doesn't work, either.)


16. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING? "Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine," Bessie Smith (Dirty. <3) href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHAhnJbGy9M">"On the Radio," Regina Spektor (That would be fantastic. I sang this song all the time, in Pittsburgh, and it was wonderful live.)

17. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL? "Sheep Go to Heaven (Goats Go to Hell)," Cake (I SWEAR TO THE MOOSE.)

18. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS? "Like the Weather," 10,000 Maniacs
Alt: "Honey, Honey," ABBA (That's more like it!)


19. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET VICE? "Purple People Eater" Sheb Wooley (Yay, eating people!) (...this was the least typo'd video I could find that had the right version of the song.)

20. WHAT DOES THIS MEME MEAN TO YOU? "It's a Small World," Paper Cats Okay, I think this is genius, and I even uploaded the file. We performed at a staff picnic on campus that was themed "it's a small world," last year, and thought, it would be fucking funny to sing that song, but in such a way that no one knew what it was at first. Hoping for that perfect groan moment, you know?  And also so it wouldn't eat their brains for the rest of the day. And I think it's actually very pretty. Pretty enough to share. First verse Spanish, first chorus French, then to English.

Alt: "Dig It," from Holes. (...I really love this, too, actually. <3>

Update:

1) Back home safe and sound. Exhausted, but generally good.
2) I love Pittsburgh.
3) I love academics. Kind of like how I love politics. ...Pretty much just like that, actually. Further: Academic conferences follow the same general rules of behavior as online fan communities do, only with less hugging (unless I'm involved), and more--yes, more--wankery. Perhaps more on this later. They're also like Stealer's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You," at least if you're prone to social anxiety and taking open bars up on their offers.
4) I got to meet Chris's oldest friend, Bob--34 years worth--and re-meet one of his best friends from grad school, Dave. And it was really, really fucking nice. I had a fantastic time. (Maybe more on this, too.) I've been facebook bingeing and blog-trawling for most of the night,* actually, since that, broken up only by fitful naps I didn't mean to take and consequent nightmares, and a compulsive playing and re-playing of an IQ-y brain game. And wine.
5) I got to meet an online Hockey Friend, and that was fantastic, too! When we saw the game with Dave, we met up with her first, and I got to get my fangirl-meets-actual-sport-interest on, which was great. It was a good game, despite the loss, and I have a face/voice to put to the blog!
6) Between the flights (San Jose -> Atlanta -> Pittsburgh and back the same route) and the conference sessions (wherein I need to run interference to keep my brain roughly on the task at hand), I knit a long, wide, ribbed scarf for an xmas present, drew two sketches of scenes in Pittsburgh (one w/ Mellon arena and conference-goer's silhouettes I'm actually quite pleased with, for what it is--may post this), scribbled on things I'm writing/plotted, and read a novel. Consequently, I felt very productive, and seem to have sustained a minor shoulder injury from the above abuse (as they were performed in very cramped quarters, and I am me). Also, speaking of Chris's college pals: the book was "Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break," by Steve Sherrill, and it filled me with this sad, diffuse warmth. It was really lovely.

Overall, I have a sense of health and thriving, despite the bone-deep tired.

So goodnight, and LOVE.



*Bob's blog turned up this quote from The Long Emergency and it'll give you a sense of the way conversation went while we were there, but it's also gorgeous, and strangely soothing in the face of collapse, so I had to repost it:

If it happens that the human race doesn't make it [through the Long Emergency], then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of a depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned, and in the end the mystery is all there is.

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, oo-oo-oo

To paraphrase Greenspan: As goes California, so goes the nation, bitches! Could you guess that the part he didn't say was "bitches?"

So Connecticut has joined my illustrious motherland in overturning its ban on gay marriage.

Can we get a domino effect on this, please?

(Now CA just needs to crush Prop 8--proposed constitutional amendment "hereby defining marriage in the state of California as between one man and one woman." It won't stop any other state from trying to write over their own decisions with their own ballot measures, but it'd sure be a discouraging start!)

A Precious Right

I'll post this back up at the beginning of November, I'm sure, but for now I'm just so happy I managed to capture it on my little iSight camera.

Brief closer to a 1950's game show, one night.

(...yes, we've been watching a lot of What's My Line?, DVRd from the Game Show Network. It's... really sweet, actually.)

Well, I can't stop now...

I thought this was supposed to be Economics, tonight? We have to listen to Questions From the Gallery?

...This is going to diminish the ability for a successful drinking game. However, the need will probably arise more than before. So, anyway, here's a short set.

DRINK:

Candidates
*Any time the phrase "Main Street" is used.
*If Keating Five comes up (Kudos, Obama, for finally mentioning it!)
*If Ayers or the Weathermen come up.
*Any time McCain says "Miss Congeniality" or "Maverick."
*Any time McCain actually looks at Obama.

EDIT: The audience questions are bust, they've all been vetted. Still drink for "What are you going to do for me?" But here're a few added ones:

McCain mentioning suspending his campaign.
If any candidate shakes the hand of a questioner during the course of an answer.
If a candidate asks a questioner a question.
Any outright lies.


EDIT: Oh, good, John, that's true. You HAVE voted against a lot of spending. Including spending on the veterans and troops you support so much. Things like body armor.

E2: I love Obama's "Are you fucking kidding me?" look in response to McCain's OUTRIGHT LIES ABOUT HIS TAX PLANS. McCain, I have insurance--it's better than what I could get with a $5000 tax credit if the insurance was cut. And I don't have kids. LEAVE ME ALONE.

E3: HANDSHAKE! I win!

I can think of a better reason.

Okay, Time author. Your description of woman-on-woman hate was pretty funny. But I could barely have managed to be more disappointed by this article. (Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin)

I actually love that she's attractive, and confident. If I knew nothing about her politics, I'd think she was adorable. I still kind of do. Embarrassment isn't really an issue, either. A small part of me actually deeply loves Sarah Palin.

So you know what? It really is just a matter of hating on the policies.

Oh, it takes other forms out of a kind of defensiveness. There might even be a degree of repressed misogyny in the way I want to get into a dogfight-cum-grudgefuck with her. But then again, maybe it's just the way my brain, overloaded with anger and insult, is choosing to combine "she's attractive, confident, and with the potential for fragility underneath" with "that's the most appalling set of politics I've come across in a long time." Plus, me = dog.

I respect approximately two things she's ever done. I'm all in on closing loopholes on oil company tax policy, for instance.

...okay, one thing she's done.

Otherwise? She's a menace on just about every issue I hold dear. And even on ones about which I just have Views. I don't think I even have to get into that, here, do I? (Though, Times author, I was impressed with the way in which you so readily dismissed the impact of actual politics on my political views! Well done!) Now I will admit that I am insulted, too, and that that's probably ramping up the level of disdain--the choice to appoint her as running mate was a pretty weak pander. If there wasn't the buzz (hopefully overblown) about displaced Hillary supporters looking to McCain, would he have chosen her? There would have been plenty of other options for people who would have roused the Base for him. Although I suppose choosing a woman with anything that actually looks like a record of defending women's rights wouldn't have worked in McCain's favor with said Base. In the end, she's the political equivalent of a trophy wife, and that really doesn't do anything to resonate with my feminism.

And now supposing she did become leader of the nation. The executive record she suggests is so important is terrifying. It's full of grudges being played out in politics, friendships being the primary decider on who gets what post (as opposed to competence), general corruption and calculated secrecy checked against legal loopholes--in short, a good replica of the Bush White House. That's not something I'm looking forward to repeating.

And as for competence: I understand that she's having to do a lot of learning very quickly, and she's making leaps. I can forgive misspeaking, and I thought she did very well in the debate, especially compared to Everything Else She's Said So Far. But while experience isn't the be all and end all for me, having a solid grasp of the political situations around you is pretty fucking crucial. Demonstrating a capacity to think critically about them--and to not rely on (more Bush-esque ploys) appealing to "the American people's common sense" or "common values" or anything else that is a stand in in today's rhetoric for Not Actually Thinking--is pretty fucking crucial.

So, while I'm delighted at your attempt to dumb down my political feelings to that classic Petty Woman-y Getting-My-Hate-On, I think in the end that--in this case-I'm still going to want to "just elect a man" into office, "like we've always done." You know, the man with the policies I support, the most similar sense of values, the capacity to improve our country's standing in the view of the rest of the world, the ability to potentially inspire us to live up to higher standards rather than down to pettiness and populism-for-its-own-sake, the one with better record on women's issues...

On second thought, you must be right. My girly anger machine must just be getting in the way of my ability to be loyal to the sex, and look past how perfect she is to the leader underneath. I just hate her because she's pretty.

So there's a VP debate, tonight...

I know it's Thursday. And don't think that by my doing this I mean to suggest that the whole thing is risible--I certainly didn't mean that last time. It's really just a way of expressing frustration/snark with the rhetoric in a way that doesn't necessarily result in wallowing/hair-tearing, and provides a road to soothe said frustration at that.

That said, here's another drinking game.

See, I think the problem with the debate game for the last time was that I'd been thinking of it in terms of two separate speeches, as opposed to a debate. It's hard not to. That may be a problem with this set of rules, too, but I'm hoping I'll have gotten a little closer.

DRINK:

Any time Biden mixes a metaphor--big drink if there are at least three things that don't go together in the sentence.

Any time Palin uses job interview level stalling tactics (e.g. "In what way?" "That's a good question..." "That's a very important question." "You know, I've been thinking about that a lot..." "Excuse me, could you repeat the question?") or defers from answering a question entirely.

Any time either of them says something unequivocally, factually false.

If either of them says flat out, "That is a lie."

Any time either of them uses an insultingly cliche aphorism or a painfully folksy metaphor.

If Biden slams his fist on the podium or extends it for emphasis, or if Palin raises her arm and points very high.

If Biden says something that could be (fairly or unfairly) construed as sexist, or Palin says something that could be (fairly or unfairly) construed as racist.

If Palin uses the phrases "tax and spend" or "cut and run, or Biden uses the phrases "four more years" or "out of touch."

If Palin suggests Obama doesn't have enough experience. If Biden suggests Palin HAS enough experience (extra points if it's backhanded--e.g. refers to her history of croneyism, jingoist rhetoric, or excessive secrecy in comparison to behavior of Cheney or Bush).

Any time the following phrases are used: "What ______ doesn't seem to understand..." "Bridge to Nowhere," "pork barrel," "pet project," "your tax dollars," "irresponsible spending," "Main Street," "Corporate Welfare," "Socialized _____," "what America needs."

...Besides, when there's pineapple in the house, there needs to be an excuse for Piña Coladas.

EDIT: Wish I'd mentioned referencing the suspension of McCain's campaign, the "woman in Kansas" story, and "bringing people to the table"/"bipartisan efforts." And excessive references to Alaska--that one I'd intended to and left out. EDIT again: "Gosh darn it," "doggone it"...

And I'm actually drinking something called a Mixed Metaphor, instead of a boat drink. Chris suggested I make one up--it's vanilla vodka, pastis (like absinthe or an anisette), and lemon/lime.

EDIT 2: "referred to raping the outer coast" -- Hey, Sarah, what about your stance on how to treat rape victims?
And she didn't have her "noo-klee-ur" phonetic card.

EDIT 3: Gwen Ifill, oh my God, you actually asked a hot-button issue. I love you.

EDIT 4: Sarah Palin doesn't understand that "two state policy" means giving Palestine its own country. I think she thought that meant multinational effort. (I'm nearly certain of this.)

EDIT 5: From my mother: "She's Dolores Umbridge. She's smarmy and she's scary--she's Dolores Umbridge."

EDIT 6: I'm sorry, Palin, as far as emotional impact and pulling on heartstrings are concerned, that answer had nothing on "my wife and daughter are dead and I had to take care of my children alone." (Me = kinda' crying a little.)

McCain's support of troops and veterans.

His most unimpeachable stance, right? How could a veteran--a POW--be anything but sympathetic and supportive? Especially after this statement during the first debate:

"I know the veterans, I know them well, and I know that they know that I'll take care of them, and I have been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans, and I love them, and I'll take care of them, and they know that I'll take care of them."

..and his suggestion that if he started a spending freeze, it would cover everything *but* defense and veterans' programs.

Well, non-partisan veterans' groups are looking at this claim of support. It apparently upset a lot of troops and vets.

So someone compiled a thorough list for his voting record and statements on troops and vets issues.

Please look at that. Even if it's not your hot-button issue. Even if you just skim it. It's pretty incredible.

Debate Drinking Game!

I had to do it. Coming in just under the wire, a Presidential Debate Drinking Game! Pretty simple, but it should hold for these debates. Let me know if you actually do it, eh? I'm pausing it on DVR so I have a little more time to get set up, here.

DRINK:

Any time McCain mentions his time as a POW.
Any time McCain uses the phrase "brave Americans" to refer to troops.

Any time Obama refers to McCain as "my esteemed ____" or "my respected_____".
Any time Obama mentions his father, or his (white) grandmother. (Take a big slug if he mentions them both in the same sentence.)
Any time Obama uses the word "dreams."

Any use of the phrase "9/11"

If McCain accuses Obama's tax plan of raising taxes "on Americans."
If Obama mentions the "Bush economy."*
If Obama brings up McCain's comments about $5 mil being rich or not remembering how many houses he owns.
If McCain brings up Obama's sex-ed bill.

Any "I met a woman in Kansas..." kind of story. Take a good slug if it involves dying of cancer or losing a house.

If Obama calls McCain "out of touch" or McCain calls Obama "elitist."
If either candidate accuses the other of "socializing" anything.* (Extra drink if he follows it with the phrase "on our backs" or "on the backs of _____ Americans.")

Any time anyone mentions Palin.*

Any time McCain contends Palin has as much (or more) relevant experience as (/than) Obama.

Any time an animal is mentioned, whether referring to a literal animal or as a metaphor.
Any incredibly folksy metaphor is used.
Drink twice if anyone uses an obscenity or loses their temper.

Any time Jim Lehrer refers to "Main Street."*

Special bonus drink for the incredible disappearing scandal: If Jim Lehrer asks about John McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal, finish your drink and get a new one.*


Enjoy!

*Contributed by my lovely Chris.

And now for a sillier work thing:

I have too much fun with my status messages online. I don't think anyone really gets them, other than sometimes identifying that they're song lines? But there's a theme.

So far I've used:

"Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it..." (from Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man")

"So come on, Virginia, show me a sign,/ Send up a signal, I'll throw you the line..." (from Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young")

"She gave me some dictation,/ but my strength is in administration..." (from Belle and Sebastian's "Step Into My Office, Baby")

And now, more surreally:

You can talk to me
You can talk to me-e
You can talk to me--if you're lonely you can talk to me.

Hey! Woof! Hey, Bulldog!

(...which is the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog!")

Hey, be nice--no REM sleep, remember?

So, apart from all being parts of songs that are generally fairly naughty (okay, kind of a lot naughty), the lines themselves are all "I'm here to help," and "grab me if you need me!" Get it? Get it??

GENIUS!

Because that's basically my function, go-to girl. Cast your dancing spell my way! Send up a signal! My strength is in administration! You can talk to me! All in all, that I'm there and very, very flexible. Work-wise.

...but it's all a little obtuse, I guess. Still, I'm noticing more people with more elaborate status messages, now. It was all fuera de la oficina and not at my desk and Busy (on the phone), before. Unfortunately, my Spanish isn't good enough, especially with idiomatic things, to really understand most of the new ones. Something about a baby with a head like a coconut...? Idunno.

But, anyway, I'm way too easily amused.

My boss's bank just bought my bank.

(Bitching re: private corps as related to us specifically has been redacted, just in case. But it was there. Oh, it was there.)

Okay. So in the midst of all this shit, my wonderful little non-profit is pretty safe, I think. (...Fretting...) Luckily, work didn't wind up building anything on money that would have disappeared, now. (...Snarking...) Apparently appropriate regulation is all right, for a non-profit. (...Kvetching...)

As for Chris and I, we're thinking of going credit union when this all settles down a little. Credit Unions don't buy up every bad mortgage they can get their hands on, willy nilly, and then expect the rest of us to pay for their fuck-ups. I'm ready for non-profit banking, baby.

Until then (to the tune of "California..."), FDIC, here I come...

(I am unaccountably really amused by the whole fucking thing.)

Also edit: We're not actually going to FDIC. We are, currently, okay.

Women's Rights in 2008?

My God, I just started a forward. Never before, in all my life.... To touch on just one tiny piece of this year's politics, I researched and wrote sent out something to a handful of people that I hope will actually be forwarded. It's specifically about Palin (and McCain) on women's rights, to touch on this idea some people have that a vote for McCain/Palin could possibly, somehow further the cause of gender equality.

I'm posting it here. If any of y'all feel like it's worth sending out? *Please* go ahead and C&P and pass it on.


_________________________


Subject: Women's Rights in 2008?

I don't usually do this, but I had to speak up--this affects us all. Please send this anyone you know who cares about women's welfare.

"In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them ... McCain has turned the idea of the first woman in the White House from a true moment of change to an empty pander." - Ann Friedman, American Prospect

Here are some things to think about, if you're on the fence about whether electing Palin to the White House will advance the cause of gender equality and safety of women:

Despite mounting evidence that (1) it does not lower the number of teen pregnancies, (2) it actually increases instances of unprotected sex, and (3) consequently increases the spread of venereal disease in teenagers, Sarah Palin is a proponent of abstinence only education. (Though her own family's behavior is considered sacrosanct, her 17 year old unwed daughter is pregnant, presumably despite copious instruction to be abstinent until marriage.)

Sarah Palin cut funding for transitional homes for teenage mothers without places to live or the ability to care for their babies--putting girls with newborns and no support on the street, without the education or resources to actually take care of those children.

Sarah Palin is anti-choice. Even in cases of rape and incest. She has said that even if her own daughter was raped, she would be against her receiving an abortion.

As Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin made sure that women who were raped had to pay for their own rape kits--that is, if you are raped, you have to pay the police to collect the semen from your body and analyze it. The police are not expected to, in the course of their investigations, collect the physical evidence of the crime--it is a luxury that you have to pay for separately. (This is not the case if, for instance, your car gets stolen or your home gets broken into--police work is covered by your taxes. But your being raped nullifies your rights to a 'free' and thorough investigation.) The kits cost up to $1200.


And for just a few notes on McCain's policies, if you're fairly certain he'll make it through all four years himself, without granting any powers to Palin on the way:

John McCain is against birth control. He has never supported any legislation that would reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. He voted against health insurance--even plans that cover Viagra--having to cover birth control.

McCain also supports a the overturn of Roe v. Wade and a constitutional ban on abortion.

McCain voted against (and helped defeat) a bill that supported equal pay for women doing equal work.

And on the more personal and anecdotal side of things, when McCain's first wife was disfigured by a car accident, he began cheating on her, then divorced her, and married a younger heiress. In view of reporters, when said heiress teased him about losing his hair, he called her a trollop and a cu*t.
(If these sound a little hard to believe, here are some articles:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html )


Please think about this for the upcoming elections, and send this on to anyone you know who might think women are PEOPLE, who deserve equal pay or equal protection under the law.

Updates

So everything's going okay, now, pretty much. Chris had a fantastic birthday bash incl. a ten course meal he made, because he is amazing. We had a great time, and are still hungover, two days later. We're also probably coming down with something, but let's hope it's just a matter of being exhausted.

Two days before the party, not to be outdone by my Little Eye Incident, Zach (my Baby Brother) wound up in the emergency room. With horrible pain that turned out to be appendicitis. So they had to cut him open. But they did it lacroscopically (I think?) and he was able to go home the next day. He's not feeling so hot, but he's healing, and going to be fine. (We're not going to discuss just How freaked out I was when I heard my brother was about to be cut open, because he is Fine and is going to be Fine. Yes.)

What else... Turned out I hadn't actually messed up at work (yay!), so to make up for it, I missed a meeting I was supposed to join for the first time (first item on the agenda: "Welcome Lauren!") and felt pretty rotten about it, but between stress and lacking a computer, it was pretty tough to remember and no one had any grief for me (I'm so lucky, I work with just the best people). But I have got my new computer, now. Well, new to me. He's refurbished (and christ, he's a He, I'm not sure how that happened--I've never had a machine or vessel that wasn't, as is decreed by tradition and the love of a good engineer, a She, but there it is) but he looks absolutely pristine, so I'm not sure who could've dared send him back or for what.

His name is Marlowe.

Here is Marlowe's self portrait:


...because Marlowe, being one of these fancy dan new MacBooks, has a little camera in his face. He makes his own flash by turning the screen bright glowing white.

He's bottom of the Mac line, but where my Ophelia had a 400 Mhz processer, 320 MB RAM (maxed out!), and 15 GB space, Marlowe has EDIT: a 2.1 GHz processor, (the 800Mhz is his bus speed, I'm just a flake) 1 G of RAM (expandable), and 120 GB space. Also, he can burn CDs. That may not sound like much to y'all, but Ophelia predated that mess, because she was Old School (she also had a non-Intel processor, which a small stubborn part of me insists on favoring). Also, Marlowe's speakers work. And he's Recycled.

He's really beautiful, with a glossy screen and bushy tail and perky ears. He's light and small and lovely. I'm still missing what for many years had been my sole lifeline to the world, and afterwards, the repository of all my little brain could write, and I can't even bring myself to send her away, so I'm just going to have to keep her. But I'm warming to this wonderful little gleaming orphan in my lap.

So send a little love his way, if you would, because he's still feeling shy and out of place.

Well, I'm going to go have dinner, and then probably vegetate, because whoof. But LOVE to y'all.



Post script, couple things, just for posterity: I forgot to mention Carol, Pat, and Jean, more close family friends, all in my grandmother's neighborhood, who died in the earlier part of the year, and Medora (probably the coolest 90 year old you'll ever meet) who went last year from the same street. It's been a tough year for my grandma, too.

Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered.

....And this update is being posted from Chris's computer. Because about two hours ago, with a clanging hurdy-gurdy kind of noise, Ophelia stopped turning over.

The last thing I did with her was read a little excerpt from "Where the Truth Lies," in which the narrator was describing a waitress as having "eyes like a murder victim," and subsequently referring to her as Ophelia.

She slowed down, and sensing danger I went to snag the last few files I hadn't backed up the updates of, but I never was able to get email up, or even the flash drive to register. I've got almost everything, though. Just not her. So here's to the end of an era, ladies and gentlemen--if you'll excuse me, I'll go pour one out for my homegirl and mourn and see what Apple can do me in a refurbished MacBook.


O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectation and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!

One of those weeks.

Eleven years ago today, my father died. I was not quite fourteen, my brother was not quite eleven. I was due to start high school, Zach to start middle school. It was a Monday that year, too. I got called, that morning, to come to a Key Club meeting.

Suffice it to say, I didn't go.

I've been thinking a lot about the people I've lost, lately. It's probably not a healthy cycle. Every person I lose, I back myself up through time and catalogue all the others. Seven and eight saw Grandpa John and Grandma Eunie go (that left me Grandma Jane, as my great grandparents and Grandpa Bob had died before I was born). Then our close neighbor Sam, whose wife had Alzheimer's, and who kept having to be told again and again that her husband had died. My father's friend Rodney passed away, and then my father a few years after that. Some slightly more distant relatives next. My high school friend Manny, the same age as me, died of cancer when we were only nineteen. Then Uncle Bob (really my father's uncle), then my father's sister, Aunt Linda (that happened while I was leaving my ex, to move in with Chris). She was the same age as Daddy had been. Friend Nancy from the choir, right as our Lancelot was dying. (And the number of close animal friends we're not going to get into.) And now--

Well, I had my first good day in about two weeks, yesterday. My friend Christina took me out to see "Mamma Mia!" and it's basically happiness encapsulated. But I still cried at "Dancing Queen." I've been doing that, lately.

A Thursday and a half ago, I found out my great Uncle Dick, whom I loved very much, who pierced my ears when I was eleven and was my ear/nose/throat doc when I was a kid (we had such bad ears!), had died. Almost a week before. No one remembered to tell me. So I found out via an emailed obituary from a family member I haven't heard from since September. I'd already missed the funeral. I hadn't seen Uncle Dick in more than a year. They put him to sea, where my Grandpa John is. I didn't get to go to his funeral, either.

The next day, puffy-eyed and sore, I went to put eyedrops in, and put in an earwax removal drop in my left eye instead (I grabbed the wrong bottle, they look remarkably similar). The drops contain carbomide peroxide, which can cause blindness and other serious corneal damage. So I spent Friday in the ER and picking up prescriptions. My insurance didn't think I needed to see an ophthalmologist, though. Now I'm not sure if the increased blurriness in my left eye is just that my astigmatisms in that one have gotten a little worse and I'm paying more attention, now, or whether I've got some lasting damage.

That meant I had to take a couple of days off from straining my eyes at working, considering the work I had lined up, to be due in about a week, was a large stack of small print business cards whose info had to be put into an online database. Plus another PDF file of cards, plus a more urgent list of contacts. I got the list in, and had to stop. Life happened generally, and slowed me down further, although not unpleasantly.

But then I found out there'd been a mix-up (my fault, at least partially and possibly mostly) and I hadn't sent a supply to a coworker that was needed... well, the day before I heard about it, basically. That started another chain of stress. And guilt. And waiting to get the supplies, and running out of ways to send them, and not being able to get ahold of other coworkers who were busy, or deathly ill, and whom I hated having to disturb anyway. I spent six hours unable to leave, or be indisposed for more than a few minutes at a time, waiting to hear back, and never did (because busy, deathly ill). So I finished the stacks of cards, and strained my eyes, and had to stop.

That part is as fixed as I can get it, at least, now.

I'm upset I've knocked the shine off of myself, at work, though. I want to tell them everything about what had been happening, why I've been stressed, why I'm having trouble with these things, why I'm not dealing in my usual incredibly cheerful, energetic way, but how do I do that without being dramatic? Without sounding self-pitying? They've got enough to deal with, themselves. They're not calling me out. I don't think they're mad. Lee finally told me it wasn't really a big deal, and not to worry too much. I just said I'd been having a shitty week. But I want to be better than that, for them. I want them to keep thinking I could never do any wrong by them.

Ah, well. The scales have to fall some time, I guess.

Anyway. I've got the aftershocks of stress. I'm feeling very low. And my eyes still hurt.

And I think I just hallucinated the smell of my dad's aftershave. Or maybe my uncle's.

I think I'm going to go try to get a little sunshine.



EDIT: Oh, just insult to injury, but I forgot to mention: in the midst of all this--of all the computer work I've had to do?--my poor old 7.5 year old laptop was trying to die, and required backing up, wiping, reinstalling, etc. Which took another couple of days out of my time to finish that work. She's okay, now, but I'm not sure for how much longer.

Bullet point version of all the posts I almost meant to write

Alive, not burned up in the fires or anything (just breathed way more smoke than is healthy). Carlin sadness, fruit happiness. Depressed recollections of lost family. Happy musings on the kittens ( =my babies, see, 'cause...) Building a cat tower. Had my year review--got an unexpected raise and a whole lot of praise. Had my fourth anniversary (of moving in together--the big one) with Chris, yesterday, truly fabulous. Sex, love, rock and roll.

Kept starting to write about everything here, but the actual will to do it seems to have gone out. But I'm still trying to keep up with everyone else. Love!

I was a conscientious objector, but I couldn't beat the draft.

Chris and I are married. We have been for two years and thirteen days and an hour or so. We got in the car on June 3rd, 2006, with our witness, Christina, all of us looking trashy and muttering, and drove down to Madera to get a marriage license (Merced's office was closed, that weekend), and get hitched in a civil ceremony.

Let's back up a bit, now, to explain.

Chris and I never wanted to be married. All of my life, my perception of marriage had been that it's the excuse people in bad relationships use to stay in them. It's expensive to divorce. Everything is owned together, so everything has to be divided up. It often comes with houses and children and other things impossible to split up. So a lot of people who are bad to one another, who are unhealthy for one another, stay together in spite of it, because they're married.

I figured, I want to stay with him because we should be together, not because there was a hell of a large legal tangle there to get through to get out.

I understand that that only comes into play if one does want to leave, so I'm starting to mellow on the idea, but it just always had such a poisonous connotation for me, I wanted nothing to do with it, myself.

Chris didn't want to be married because he'd just come out of a nasty divorce, from a marriage he hadn't really wanted to enter in the first place. It wasn't something that spoke volumes of joy to him, either.

And neither of us, frankly, really liked the connotations of the "traditional" marriage and wedding; the transfer of woman as property from one male (father 'giving away') to another (the husband that 'takes' the bride), or the whole bit about obeying. Whatever proponents, "defenders" say, the tradition of marriage has been an economic one, not a romantic one.

And the so-called tradition of one-man-one-woman is recent, too; how is it that people toting the Bible as their defense of that idea don't remember Jacob's dozen simultaneous wives? Marriage to the widow of your brother? The not-quite-married but clearly deeply devoted and bonded pairs of male saints in the middle ages? What about the countries around the world that do, now, allow same-sex marriage? What about the ancient civilizations that did?

The idea that there is some sanctity of marriage, when heterosexual marriages have a 50/50 chance and things like "Who wants to marry a millionaire?" encourage strangers to gold dig and hitch up, let alone a sanctity that could be harmed by allowing devoted couples to be Official, has always been appalling to the both of us.

We didn't want to be apart of an institution so hypocritical, an institution that was being used to separate out ways of loving into legitimate and illegitimate.

We tried to get a domestic partnership, instead. Marriage Lite™, we said, Marriage! The Home Game™, is the thing for us. There's solidarity with those whose beloveds don't happen to be of a different sex than them, and there's an easy out--either person can sign a piece of paper to dissolve a DP, and it's over, so none of the staying together for the sake of avoiding a legal mess. And DPs confer insurance benefits, in California.

I desperately needed insurance. (Aye, there's the rub.)

See, my teeth were starting to give out. Half of them had cavities, and now, three root canals, plus of a dozen fillings, and three crowns later, they're in order. But you can understand, I suppose, why leaving me without insurance (after I'd been without it for 5 years already) would have been a problem. Plus, my mother chided me, what if you get hit by a bus? What if you break your arm? What if something happens?

So we looked into DPs. But we discovered a certain problem with them.

In California, DPs are only recognized between same-sexed couples, much the way marriages were only recognized between different-sexed couples. We managed to get one in Berkeley, on January 3rd, 2006, and Berkeley, Long Beach, and San Francisco will recognize it, but no one else does. So it didn't do to get me onto the insurance. If one of us had been arrested in Long Beach, we'd have had visiting rights, though. That's something.

But anyway, this further confirmed to us that we didn't want to be married.

The ONLY reason I can imagine that different-sexed couples would be barred from domestic partnerships the way same-sexed have been barred from marriage is because, whatever the anti-gay-marriage crowd says, DPs ARE a weaker institution, and same-sex couples were being ghettoized to them. "Stay over here, heterosexuals, this is the real thing. Leave the play version for Them."

But I'm not het, and I don't appreciate being muscled towards patriarchy in any case. "Separate is inherently unequal," remember that, folks? Forty years ago, we figured that out. We had rules, then, too, about which consenting adults could marry which consenting adults, it was just divided over a color line, instead of a gender one.

We Did Not Want to Be Married.

But...

But... we adore one another. We use terms like "life partner," and "lover," and "beloved" to connote one another. And a lot of sillier things, too. We don't intend to come apart, we don't intend to ever stop being together, we hardly even spend any time apart. Four years later, and we still brush our teeth together and go to bed at the same time, and eat breakfast together, and take walks together, and don't even bathe separately. We do the shopping together, and moon doe-eyed at each other, and kiss, and profess love, and hold hands when we walk. There is nothing worse in my world than the spectre of separation from my beau.

So that meant we need to be healthy, so neither of us fell apart.

So that meant I needed insurance.

So that meant that we went ahead and drove down to Madera, with our witness, who was sworn to secrecy. And the ceremony was actually very pretty--no religion (we're not religious), no "obey," no gender essentialism, no condescension, just love and respect and cherishing. It was perfect for us. Christina's cell phone went off during the vows, which felt fittingly undermining to the severity and weight of the whole thing. We laughed a lot about it. We took pictures in front of the cannon inexplicably sitting in front of the court house ("shotgunned" into marriage, see?) and signed the papers and got me protected by the state. I didn't--and won't--change my name. I told my mother. Chris told his parents.

We wanted to boycott marriage, we wanted to remain in solidarity, but we didn't have much choice, so we at least weren't going to admit to it. Not without the long explanation of why it was we weren't open about it, and a discussion of guilt and the inequality of the institution. Between those occasions and loose-lipped family, it's spread further than we'd like. But we've tried, damnit.

So. Why are we coming out now?

In the state of California, until 5 pm this afternoon, you could only be married if you were a different-sexed couple. And as we've thought more about the institution, and the fact that, once you divorce it from all that "tradition," it doesn't have to be as patriarchal and economical and stifling as it has wanted to be, the segregation of it has become the central issue in our avoidance.

And right now, at least for a few months, at least in our corner of the country, it's not an issue, anymore.

I love my state. I love my judiciary. I love San Francisco and West Hollywood and all the courthouses staying open after hours to help people who love one another get the same recognition, responsibility, and protection as everyone else has been entitled to, at the first possible moment. (I don't love Kern County, but that's not surprising, or the ballot measure set to come up in November to write "one man, one woman" into the state constitution. But otherwise.) I love New York for recognizing the new marriages. I am full of love, right now.

I love Chris. My conscientious, wonderful, beautiful love.

I'm still not sure I can call him my husband, except to quiet down confused salesmen and telemarketers, but maybe once in a while I will. My spouse, for sure. My partner for always. My love.

A meme! A me-eme! BURN HER!!

I LOVE this game. I'm such a sucker.

1. Think of 10 short bits of interesting stuff about yourself. And they've gotta be true.
2. Come up with 5 false statements regarding yourself, but for fun's sake keep them in the threshold of believability.
3. Jumble them all up together and list them in any order.
4. Post them on your blog and let people guess which the five false ones are!
(Hey, if there are some you think are definitely true, go ahead and gimme those, too.)

I've also categorized these for you, just 'cause I realized there were themes. /OCD.

Body:
1) I once asked an orthodontist to take out a tooth that he told me did not exist.
2) My hair was straight until puberty.
3) I have only taken anti-depressants when also taking birth-control.

Hygiene/health:
4) I love to vacuum and do it all the time.
5) I am crazy about food hygiene--I don't lick spoons, I don't share glasses, I don't eat raw cookie dough, I never eat anything off of the floor, etc.
6) The sound of someone sniffing wetly (as in, instead of blowing their nose) or scratching upset skin loudly causes me to become a twitching, tic-ridden ball of barely contained violence.
7) I really don't care for scented candles, incense, potpourri, essential oil diffusers, etc.--gimme Febreeze and Glade air fresheners any day.

Brain and neuroses:
8) I liked driving rack-and-pinion (i.e. without power steering), in an old VW bug. I preferred it to the relative safety and comfort of power steering and anti-lock brakes.
9) I sometimes make Chris check the shower for monsters. Sometimes he has me check the closet.
10) I can say "goodbye" in eight languages, "I Love You" in nine, "thank you" in ten, and a greeting in eleven. Often in multiple ways.
11) 4, 14, 140, 1400 does it: I had a 4.0 GPA for most semesters in of all schooling, 14 units of requirements already met on entry into college (from AP and an early class), an IQ tested at 140, and 1400 on my SATs. Exactly.

Plants:
12) Most of my houseplants are poisonous to cats.
13) The type of flower I cannot stop buying is the one I'm most allergic to. Bunches at the store, five different kinds to plant in the yard, etc. It's almost always around.
14) I'm great with African violets, but total crap with Jade plants.
15) I can't take the smell of really perfume-y flowers--I find jasmine, wisteria, gardenias, magnolias, stock, and mums really cloying and avoid them.

Where Bowers of Flowers Bloom in the Spring!

California's top court overturns ban on gay marriage

And then a little of my faith in my state is restored.

Now we just have to vote down the new proposed ban (this time in the form of a constitutional amendment) in November. Or hope it doesn't get on the ballot in the first place.

(Subject line from the song, "California, Here I Come," which is, I now find, NOT our official state song. Alas!)

California, here I come--right back where I started from
Where Bowers of flowers bloom in the spring
Each morning at dawning, birdies sing an' everything
A sunkist miss said, "Don't be late"--that's why I can hardly wait
Open up that Golden Gate,
California, here I come!

Pictures of Lily.... Or, wait, not...

Okay, I can't help it:



Me with Arthur!

Various notes:
*OMG TOES! Kitten toes! LOOK!
*Best seat in the house, right? (alt:) It's good to be the King.
*Not just an empty jug of wine on the sink, but an empty bottle of vodka, too. Classy. Also, a coffee/espresso maker: we don't have a microwave, but we have an espresso maker. I guess that's just the kinda' peoples we are.
*There is a piano in the background, there, upper left of the photo, and the belly of one of Chris's guitars to the lower right (or the hip, I suppose?).

That picture makes me feel So Warm and Fuzzy. Aaaah. <3

/goo.

They get neutered Friday. Concerts went well; last choir rehearsal/meeting was Monday--next is on my birthday. :) We're going to do Poulenc's Gloria and Beethoven's 9th Symphony (Ode to Joy) in the Spring!!! And it's working-the-butt-off-time at work. But Chris's school year is almost over, work is progressing well, I'm happy as ever to get volunteered. I'm spending way too much time fussing with Facebook, and it makes me feel a little dirty. :\ But I'm about ready to let it fall back into obscurity. I've got work to do and junk to write and kittens to love--no time for that!

Sexist green; kittens

I just saw a commercial for greening up that suggested men skip the shave, to save water. Hold off as long as you can, look manly, and then when you really need to shave, switch to a recycled plastic razor. (It really did phrase it that way--look manly!)

And then, "Girls, don't think we forgot you!"

I thought, joy! Are they actually going to acknowledge the fact that women's shaving--on account of how it covers vastly more surface area--is necessarily going to involve a greater number of razors being thrown out, vastly more water, more chemical products? Is it actually going to advocate cutting back? Only going to the knee? Not doing it or doing it less in winter? Stopping altogether, if you dare?

Nah. It suggested not washing your hair every day, and just hiding it on the days you don't with a hat or an up-do.

Really?

This is as much as we can possibly stand to even consider?

Chris and I shower--together--three times a week (when he doesn't need the water, I use it; when I don't, he does--so no waste). I only wash my hair twice a week. I don't shave at all. I did used to shave, and shower and wash my hair daily, back in The Day. I also had bad, dry, *and* spotty skin (best of both worlds, right?), mangled splitty hair, ingrown hairs, bumps, cuts, burns, and poor body image, because my body is not meant to be treated that way.

I don't really get spots, anymore. My hair--all of it--is soft, and nice, and feels good, and looks good. My skin is great. And I have obviously not had razor burns in something like five or six years.

I know that's not going to work for everyone. But christ, it's an option, isn't it? Any little bit of it is. Your body adapts. The more often you scrub? The more oil your skin and hair produce, to try to heal. If you back off, it'll tend to adjust accordingly.

Ah, well.

On a completely unrelated topic:
The kittens are so fricking cute. And Chris is really cute about them. His post on their litter boxing.

I'm so in love. With all three of them. <3

Apologies in Advance

My brain was stuck in a feedback loop of thinking about this, and it was stopping me sleeping. And thinking. And everything. It's too early in the morning for this, but I need to be able to get on with my day.

Obama says public tired of hearing about his former pastor

Big surprise, huh?

So Obama is taking heat for his pastor, when McCain can blithely take endorsements from Hagee?

Some people are saying the difference is that Obama was actually a member of the congregation, had known Wright for twenty years, so this man really must have had influence on him. But frankly, I have family members, whom I love and care about, and whom I have known for well over twenty years, whose political influence on me is absolutely nil. This is because I like to think I'm fairly free-thinking, and when it becomes evident to me that someone I know has a very different political position from one I have, I don't put all of my own convictions aside and let theirs write them over. A matriarch is not going to make me "not trust Arabs" just because she doesn't (I am, btw, Syrian in significant portion--from the other side of the family). An aunt is not going to make me anti-union (I am, in fact, the official union groupie for my particular favorite). An older cousin sending me anti-Obama propaganda has clearly not diminished my support for him (I spammed back the list with correct information which I assume was ignored, but at least the effort was made).

Is someone really going to tell me that, even though I'm openly and actively opposed to the things these older people in a position to be respected are in support of, that I'm secretly anti-Arab (me), anti-Union (Chris), and anti-Obama (whom I voted for and will again)?

Seriously?

I feel, somehow, that this is not a compelling argument.

So what IS different about Wright and Farrakhan, and Hagee?

Apart from the really obvious one?

Why are they dangerous radicals whose support needs to be cast off, when Hagee is a good man whose support is an honor? (Here's a fun article, by the way, chock full of actual Hagee quotes, about how gay sin caused hurricane Katrina, how Muslims are mandated to kill Christians and Jews, and how we have to seek war with Iran to cause more deaths to bring about the Rapture. I am not over-simplifying.)

I really do think most of it comes down to the image, the familiarity or lack thereof. If your audience is primarily white and Christian (which is going to be the case in a country approximately 73.9% white and 76.5% Christian--those are the real demographic numbers, honest), it's more likely that more of them will not feel as much kinship with a black man in a dashiki as with a white man in a suit; the image is more likely to be alarming, because of associations people have built up with "radical" minority groups. The churches the bulk of the audience went to will more likely have been helmed by someone like Hagee or Robertson than by Wright (and let me clarify--I don't mean that the majority of white, Christian churches are headed by people with positions like Hagee, just more than are headed by people with positions like Wright's). The image there is more familiar. Someone that reminds you of family--whether or not it's family you agree with--is generally given more leeway than someone who does not.

And frankly, I'm not surprised that they're up in arms about something that addresses their own demographic in the negative, instead of the demographic of someone else. It's a lot easier to ignore digs at Muslims and lesbians than digs at straight, white, Christian men, isn't it?

But other than that?

The most generous reason I can think of is that people commenting can construe what's happening in Wright and Farrakhan's positions as specifically racist (as opposed to some other kind of prejudice)--which makes them look like open game. Hagee may be openly bigoted, and waging his verbal assaults on minorities and others that America's in a position to do grave damage to, to the point of actually advocating violence and oppressive legislation, but since that's not directly on a black/white divide, it's left alone. The media's not allowed to comment on these merely "controversial" positions that might be held by your average American, like anything having to do with gay rights, abortion, Islam, or war. The media's allowed to (encouraged to) practice absolute moral relativism in relation to these things ("Gays: trying to raise families, or indoctrinating children? Both positions commonly held today: who's to say who's right? (We report, you decide!)"). But they are allowed to weigh in on something as closed-book as black-vs-white. Not as many people at the moment are open proponents of racial tension (they just have their Opinions, right?) so anyone commenting about race in an unfamiliar way is fair game for attack from something you can pretend is a moral high ground.

Ah, but... Giuliani didn't have to denounce Pat Buchanan. Who made this statement. I'll save you some time: the best bit is where he says African-Americans should be grateful that their ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved, because it gave them the chance to be Christianized and brought up in this great nation.

...Hm.

So maybe Wright's statements are controversial and upsetting. I'll grant that. But I really think there is something qualitatively different (and less deplorable) about the things he's said and the things Hagee says--namely, the spirit and direction of the anger. Wright's anger is directed towards a real history of oppression that has been experienced--maybe it's not helpful, maybe it's divisive, but there is at least a legitimate context--and Hagee's is directed at the repeal of the historical oppressions of others that he'd rather perpetuate.

If you're going to go ballistic about something, I'd much rather it be about Tuskegee than about a gay parade. I really believe that's a better place to come from.

But maybe I'm just betraying my bias, here.

The black men I know and have known still get harassed regularly by the cops, and I don't. People who are far more law-abiding and hard working than I am--ones who work more than part time, who've never smoked pot and don't drink (like I do)--get stopped on the street. If they've got the money to drive a decent car to work, they've been accused of having stolen it (DWB), and if they walk home, they're accused of skulking and suspicious behavior (...Walking.. While Black??). This is today. Not thirty years ago--now. It's still systemic, and not just in the deep south--this is liberal, diverse, southern California we're talking about, here.

Their parents, aunts, grandparents went to schools that were still segregated de jure, and much less often had gotten the chance to go to college afterwards, so that's the background they've had for support for school--that's going to get better every year, I know, every generation, but it's still there. My family was full of college graduates--thriving in the school system is just going to take less work with that background, because it's not having to build much farther than your parents had the opportunity to go. Even Chris went to a school that was segregated in everything but name--with almost all black students forced into remedial classes, which were literally held in a different building on the campus. And most school districts today are still de facto segregated, with the poorer schools in minority areas receiving less funding, and so not performing as well, which further decreases their funding, which makes any improvement that much more difficult, and so in, in a feedback loop. With the same credit and income, a person of color will regularly get a loan with worse terms and higher payments than a white person, so foreclosures are hitting them harder, further forcing that feedback loop.

Context.

What is happening to white, Evangelical Christians of means "at the hands of" LGBT and Muslims? Secularization of schools they're not sending their children to (as mandated by the constitution)? Having to see people they don't know treated with some modicum of respect?

I'm sorry, Hagee, I just don't buy it.

(Oh, but, btw, Rev. Wright: I was raised on rock and motown, in Los Angeles. I clap on 2 and 4, not 1 and 3.)

More kittens! And a question.

When you're really tired, do you ever decide to dress loudly, in an attempt to wake yourself up?

Do you sometimes then decide that that's a bad idea, because, if you're dressed particularly brightly, someone might mention it and you'll have to interact with another human being--something you're too tired for?

The kittens spent the night nesting in my hair. Or attacking one another from the narrow space between Chris and I. Or with Arthur deciding he should lie on my head and hold my nose in his paws.

It was very sweet.

I have not really slept.

In four weeks.

But I am, and I cannot stress this enough, very, very, VERY happy. (Just also cranky.)

Kittens!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DwZVqOH20k

That, ladies and gentlemen, is video of my kittens, from a couple of days ago (Chris's guitar playing and my knees are included, free of charge). Please forgive my excessively gooey talk. (And "King of the Cuties" is a nickname Arthur's gotten because the box he's jumping on, there--that he always jumps on with so much authority--says "California Cuties" on it, and he is.)

And this one is from a few weeks ago, when they were littler, and had just figured out the stairs.

And now I just... become utterly useless and fawn.

My life is kittens. It's all one big ball of kittens.

(Check out Chris's blog for far better, more thorough, coverage.)

Pardon whiplash; wrote the first part earlier, the rest just now.

(From earlier:)
I feel like I'm walking over graves.

I was just trying to clean out our database, and make sure everyone's grouped by country--which means having to find which country some of them are in. One of the people I was looking for turns out to be deceased, now.

When a few weeks ago I was researching potential donors? One of them had died, too, only a few weeks earlier.

It's strange. I don't know them, they're probably acquaintances of acquaintances at most, but there's something macabre about googling, expecting to find where they're living, and finding out that they aren't.

And then I have to email someone and tell them.

I'm not sure whether I'm disturbing things that ought not be, or whether I'm doing a good thing by them, by sharing their deaths.

(Also: just after I finished writing that, I came up with a third.)

(And now:)
...I really need to do a gratuitous kitten post. Something light.

Updates, though: Arthur had to go BACK to the vet, but I got to sit and cuddle him for at least the first chunk of it. And he's going to be fine, just a little antibiotic fun. :\ (Because, in addition to the rest, he really DID have a UTI.) The nurses were all in love with him, and apparently spoiled him appropriately while we were away, and all came to kiss or pet him good-bye when we left. :) My little pretend-fraidy-cat flirt. <3

Oh, but then, after that, we had an eviction scare, because apparently the person who used to own the complex (i.e. not the current owner at all) likes to harass the new owners, and sent out notices to all of the current tenants of every property the new owners work with about how our tenancy is being terminated, on just parts of the property--leaving us afraid that the notice for the actual apartment was coming, just late.

Isn't that nice?

It took us two days to get ahold of someone to clear it up. So we thought we had 30 days to find a new place. In this market.

But now we know. They're working on the restraining order. The kittens are healthy, happy, and insane. So everything's going to be fine. It's just been a little stressful. Kind of like the rest of the year.

But I planted basil? (The snails/slugs ate my sprouting lettuce, peas, cucumbers, and jasmine, though, so I get to start again.) I've got tomatoes to plant, and a red pepper plant. Everything else seems to be thriving. And I've hunted down most of the snails and sequestered them. We'll be taking a trip to the part to see if the ducks will finish completing the food chain, when we find a little time. (For now, they've got food and a nice dark place to hide, so they're okay.)

And the kittens are playing tag.

Why?

Right now, Chris is taking Arthur to the vet on his way to school. It seems like he might have a urinary tract infection (he's been having lots of trouble with learning about the litter box, but now it seems like he's having deeper problems than that), but the vet is booked solid, and we can't just make an appointment--not today, not tomorrow, not Sunday--and they said we probably didn't want to wait 'til Monday if it's a urinary problem. So they told us to bring him in and just drop him off and leave him until they can squeeze him in and find out what's wrong.

We asked, will it be a few hours?

They didn't know.

Will it be overnight?

Didn't know. No idea. No guess.

So I'm now a complete fucking mess. I haven't been away from him for more than three and a half hours at a time (and that long only twice, when Chris was with them the entire time). They spend all day with me while Chris is at school, they sleep with us at night. He's never been alone. He's never more than twenty feet from us. And now he's going to be stuck--for an hour? Several? All day and all night?--in a cage at the vet's. And it's a really nice vet, really, the nicest I've ever been to, but it's a vet, so there are barking dogs, and there's no one to sleep on, and his brother's not there (he always sleeps on Alex, Chris, or I, or very very near us), and there's no one to play with, and it's scary and strange, and he's shy and easily frightened to begin with.

Alex is already crying and searching for him.

What if Arthur's completely upset? He cries if he gets stuck in the bathroom for a few minutes, what's a cage--without us, without attention--going to do to him? What if this is scarring? He's so, so young.. What if it's all day and all night and we can't rescue him until tomorrow? Will he trust us after this? Will he really remember us?

And what if it's a bad infection?

And then, what if it's not an infection? What's wrong?

And what if, rather than tomorrow, they call while Chris is at school today? Will I be able to get a cab over there? How much longer will he have to wait for Mama than necessary? What if they're done this evening, but it's after closing--will they call us to come get him, or just make him wait overnight?

He slept under the covers, curled up against me, last night. And purred, and purred.

Arthur is my baby. Alex is a little more Chris's, but Arthur's more a mama's boy.

Fuck.

This is a pretty useless entry, but I'm so upset I can't believe it. I'm sorry. Think good thoughts for my baby, okay? Hope this'll be really quick and easy. I'll update as soon as I know anything else. I feel so guilty and scared, right now. I hate it. I can't stand it.

Biblical defense of same-sex love.

Okay, I know I've done a comparative lot of this lately, but since I just basically wrote another essay in someone's journal comments, it's apparently another thing I'm worked up about. Well, truth be told, I've meant to write this up for a long time, but it came together cleaner than usual in this attempt, so I'm basically going to use it here, with some edits.

To preface this, I spent kind of a lot of time and energy in junior high and high school studying up and trying to reconcile being bisexual with being into the Bible. Eventually religion and I parted ways, anyway, but it wasn't about that, and I like to think it was a fairly amicable divorce ("Ooh, you know I was trying/ to give you the best of my-y love"). That said, I still think there's plenty of room to have faith and belief, as a GLBTQIA, if you want it.

Considering that, and alternately considering hostile parties willing to use the Bible against you regardless of whether or not you feel any affinity with it, I thought it would be useful to have the case for "alternative lifestyles" being acceptable even in the Christian Bible (especially if someone's not beholden to the "Living Bible" and its highly clunky translations).

So here goes nothing.

A case for acceptability of same-sex relationships and/or leanings with regards to the Christian Bible:

In older translations of the Bible, the only thing explicitly put on the no-no list about same-sex love is "[a man] shall not lie with mankind as with womankind" (right next to where it says not to sleep with menstruating women). The idea that the Bible says "homosexuality is a sin" there
(as purported by those handy "Living Bibles") is a modern invention, and I think oversimplifies what's actually going on there.

That passage is in the Old Testament in Leviticus, which is where all of the codes for clean, kosher living are--the rest of that book has been generally discarded by Christians as rules for the Jewish that they no longer had to follow (in part to help convert Pagans to Christianity, because adding all the extra work load to conversion was a bit of a turn-off). So even most devout Christians don't tend to avoid cutting their hair, or piercing their ears. They eat pork and have milk with meat and don't pay much heed to kosher preparation of food. And hardly anyone of any religion tries to stone people for working on Sundays, now, or considers it sinful to wear clothing that's made of a blend of fibers (cotton-poly blends, what?). And it's not even generally considered a killing offense to sleep with a woman who is on her period, these days. So choosing to retain only tiny pieces of that book seems strangely selective.

But even if someone wants to just keep that part, the only thing that's really expressly forbidden in that passage is male-male anal sex (that's the only literal, direct way I can interpret 'lying with a man as with a woman'). It doesn't address love between people of the same sex at all (and in fact there are love stories concerning male Christian martyrs and saints in pre-modern Europe), it doesn't address women together at all. It doesn't even necessarily address other forms of sex between men. So you could make an argument that even that passage allows for lesbians, bisexuals, and celibate or oral-only gay men.

And because it's in the book for living well and cleanly, I really think there's a good case to be made that the reasons for it being included at all were sanitary ones. At that point in time, with opportunities for hygiene and protection as limited as they were, mixing foods, slaughtering near other food supplies, having sex where blood was involved, and even anal sex could be dangerous for your health. It's more likely to spread disease or draw bacteria etc, if you haven't got ready access to good soap, latex, disinfectants. And so, if we've generally decided as a society that we can now do all the other things in Leviticus without it being a health hazard anymore, I don't see why even male-male sex shouldn't be on the pardoned list, too.

Another way to look at why that would be included has to do with the evolution of religions. How can a religion grow efficiently without all members actively engaged in reproduction (and, often, evangelism)? Or conquering and converting? And this, too, is no longer a problem; there is no longer a physical barrier from people of the same sex raising a child of their own blood, if they so choose.

Because there are milennia of fear and interpretation laid on all of this, mounds of cultural meaning, this all probably isn't going to cut through for most people. But I think it's a fair interpretation, and a fair way to deal with it. If someone was committed to the Book before the Church--or if they could be persuaded to consider what's written in what they consider an infallible book over what mortal men say about it--it might have some hope. Most people tend to be more committed to whatever their religious leader has said about what's in their holy book(s) than what's actually written there, though, so maybe I'm preaching to the choir.

...Haha, see, that was an humorous play on words.


End-note: this tends to be, in my head, just one section of the argument for allowing same-sex marriage, in the "that bible doesn't actually cover the 'sanctity of marriage' as one-man-one-woman" section of the treatise. I'll probably fail to contain myself and eventually post all the other parts. But we'll see if I can manage to at least not do it soon. I've got work to do, after all.

I'm no fun, anymore: Intelligent Design

(For more fun, please address Chris's journal for pictures, video, and general love about our KITTENS.)

Now I don't think that "things get sick and die" or "creature x is stupid/dysfunctional/etc" are good arguments against 'intelligent design.' Kind of like "bad things happen, so there can't be a loving God" won't really hold up.

At least, not any better than "it's too complicated to be random, so it has to have been intelligently designed."

I admit it: I do like to point out the vertebrate plight of having our esophagus and trachea cross to get to the stomach and lungs, providing an opportunity for choking we don't really need. It's not how I'd have designed it, frankly, since the tubes could be put in in straight lines, without crossing (and thus, without death by sandwich). But I suppose someone could argue the watchmaker wanted people to choke, sometimes, and get liquid 'down the wrong pipe.' If they liked. There's no disproving that, so it's not worth debating.

But there are far, far deeper flaws with this idea of Intelligent Design (which isn't actually a theory) than that.

Why isn't it a theory?

A theory has to be arrived at after taking a hypothesis as far as you can; it has to be rigorously tested-it has to be testable, or observable. And it furthermore has to have a way to be disproven--otherwise, it isn't science. That's just how the rules work.

Evolution has gained the status of theory because, over the centuries, we've watched it happen, we've bred animals (and people) in so many different combinations, and seen the changes that have occurred. We've established a fossil record, which, while it has gaps, does tend to follow well, from one thing to the next. Humans alone are a foot taller, and with shorter pinky fingers, than we were just a few hundred years ago.

All evolution really insists is that things change, over time. They breed selectively, some genes beat out other genes, some animals out-compete other animals, and so things change. New traits come up, others die out. We've seen it. We've experimented with it. It's a good theory. Like the theory of gravity. It's possible that someday something could jump up very high, and forget to fall, and then we'd have potentially partially disproven it. And it's possible that someday something could leap fully formed out of the mud, or that something could cease absolutely to change. But until then, these are our theories, and they're good theories, and they've stood up for hundreds of years to rigorous abuse.

Being "just a theory" is being pretty damn strong.

Now what about intelligent design?

Well, how can you test whether something in nature had a divine creator? How do you disprove a metaphysical intervention?

There's no proof it didn't happen. I'd never say that--there just couldn't be that proof. But that's the point: if there's no experimenting or proving it one way or another, it's not science. Metaphysics, maybe, philosophy or theology, maybe, but not science. So it doesn't belong with science.

ID has its roots way back, in philosophers in the 1700's(-ish). 'I look at a watch and I know by looking that there was a watchmaker.' The idea there was that something so complex could not just happen, and that it's simply intuitive that something greater than us made us. And while it's a nice little metaphor, I find that glass and metal being tempered in that way are the real clues to a watchmaker; observation has suggested that thinly pounded metal and gears and glass only happen when humans intervene with heat and hammers and screws. One pithy saying does not science make.

ID really runs in a circle, this way. "There are things here that are too complicated to have been made without an intelligent maker, so there must be an intelligent maker." But how can we say whether it's too complicated to make by chance? Well, by asserting that only an intelligent maker could make something so complicated as this. But you just can't prove something with itself.

But it's more than that. I think the major flaw with ID is that it disregards trial and error. By saying, "Look, how perfect! How circular! How well it fits together, and how well it is balanced!" it ignores all of the rocks in space, all of the species, all of the ecosystems, that fail and die out, that are not so perfect. Of course the planets move in roughly circular patterns, and don't crash into one another--any planet that was in a place where it would have been crashed into has been crashed into, and taken out of play. Of course our organs work (relatively) well; vertebrates whose organs didn't work as well died out. Every day, there are imperfect births, there are poorly formed fetuses that don't get born at all, there are eggs that never become implanted, and there are creatures that die, because they weren't viable, and they didn't survive.

How can something so perfect as life have just happened? Well, lightning might have struck the mud one billion times before a cell that sparked in it actually survived. Of trillions of bacteria, maybe only a few were perfect--perfect enough to live on.

The first creature in the phylum chordata--our phylum, most ancient ancestor in this run--was the lancet, and it is a sack that filters water through itself, to take little particles from it, and then it lets the waste out the same way it came in. It sticks to a rock in the ocean, and that is its life. I find it perfectly reasonable that out of a million different sacks that might have tried it out in the big ocean, most would have been too porous, not porous enough, unable to stick to the rock, unable to digest particles, etc. And if one did, then, that is not a sign of a perfect design. If a hundred seeds scatter on the ground from a tree above, and they result in six plants, that doesn't mean that the tree dropped six seeds in the six places they would survive; it means that the ones that scattered into the dark, into sand, into the paths of snails or birds, and the ones that weren't as strong to begin with, didn't ever grow for us to observe.

There is endless imperfection. There are so many systems that don't work, that can't work. But they generally don't stick around very long, for that very reason.

That doesn't mean that only perfect systems have existed, or tried to exist. That doesn't mean proof of a plan.

Now, why am I on about this?

I really have no qualms with people believing in ID--it's very appealing, it's technically possible, there's no problem with that at all--but the push into science is very troubling. Some of the institutes and think tanks that have been working on it admitted at their inception that they were going to make concerted attacks on science in general, by trying to break down what is or is not considered science. All the advances in science that have served us well--the things that have helped us build machines, study the paths of the planets for coordination, do medicine--were only possible by adhering to these rules of not accepting something as fact or theory that you couldn't potentially prove, that you couldn't experiment on. If sheer force of belief is granted the same kind of validity as something actually tested, imagine the state we would be in--that we had been in, in the past, in fact:

During the time of the plague, ghettos where Jews were segregated were generally hit much less hard, because of Levitical rules for cleanliness of living. Waste that would attract rats was not left around. Mouseholes were plugged, so rats weren't inside, so they couldn't carry the disease inside. Now, there could have been rational experiment and observation done; comparing lifestyle to prevalence of disease, seeing if Christians would get the plague less if they followed some basic hygiene principals, and then making judgments on the cause of the plague hitting someone based on that.

Instead, Jews were lynched, because they were believed to be practicing witchcraft and in league with the devil, because no one could have survived the plague in any other way. Belief trumped anything that looked like logic or real science, and contributed to the plague spreading unchecked.

Obviously ID isn't as damaging as a witch-hunt, but it needs the kind of atmosphere that allows those kinds of things.

This push for getting ID into the classroom is very similar to the political atmosphere, now; something being asserted, repeated over and over without evidence, or without being subject to proper scrutiny, is getting the same air time and the same consideration as viewpoints based in study, in logic, in picking through arguments. We're becoming dangerously relativist. If one person says, "the economic situation has further disadvantaged people who were already in an untenable position" and comes with figures to show it, and another says, "God wants them to be in that position, or they do" where is there possibly room for rational debate, there? Or even for being rational at all? Where is reality in that? God wanting or not wanting something can't enter into it; it may or may not be the case, but it isn't relevant to debate.

So it goes with ID.

Why am I on about this now?

I just saw the commercials for Ben Stein's intelligent design flick. I'd seen ads for it before, when LiveJournal decided that my being interested in science meant that the ad on my journal should be for "what big science doesn't want you to hear." And I've kind of heard enough from Stein, lately, in general. Like when he left messages on our phone at the last election about how we should vote to restrict abortion rights. (/ad hominem)

And it's frankly just starting to piss me off. :( So. There we are.