Category Archives: homosexuality

Gay marriage legal in Arizona

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In a post that took way too long to get to, gay marriage is finally legal in Arizona. -This after an amendment passed in 2008 banning it was ruled unconstitutional.

You’re goddam right it’s unconstitutional.

While I’m not gay, I do have both friends and family members that are, and any law that singles them out is clearly against the principles that founded this country. It is in no way different than singling out a group of people for any other reason, be it race, religion, or even something more trivial like eye color. That each state in a country founded on the principle that all land owning white men are created equal still has to challenge this fundamental right in court just boggles my mind. But, in a state like Arizona (where stripping people of their basic rights is status quo) it is quite a victory.

At least we weren’t quite as bad as Texas, or so I keep telling myself, whose ban on gay marriage had actually banned all marriage since being enacted with 76% of the vote in 2005 (this one was ruled unconstitutional in July 2014). Their law actually stated that, “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” And marriage is just about as identical to marriage as one can get.

I’m happy that same sex couples will finally be able to enjoy a right that they should have had all along. I’m even happier that I will never again have to listen to this bullshit argument: “If two guys can get married, what’s next? A guy can marry a horse?”

And if you are one of the ignorant rednecks that made that argument, let me explain something to you called logic. Before you go bandying about same sex marriage leading directly to bestiality being legalized, consider this: In order to apply logic to the thing you are trying to decry, you must also apply it to the thing you are trying to protect. In other words, if you want to make that case against gay marriage, you must first check it against straight all marriage. It seems that your logic there is if a man can marry his male partner, he would then marry his male horse (he is gay after all). So applying your logic to traditional marriage, that would mean that since a man can marry his female partner, he would then go on to marry his female horse. We’ve not seen a lot of that here in the U.S., and marriage has been legal for a long time…

When the few remaining states finally overturn their unconstitutional laws, we can move on as a nation and get back to telling women what do do with their bodies despite the UN requiring certain basic rights to health care among its members:

[UN members] must take measures to ensure that legal and safe abortion services are available, accessible, and of good quality.
…
Public morality cannot serve as a justification for enactment or enforcement of laws that may result in human rights violations, including those intended to regulate sexual and reproductive conduct and decisionmaking. Although securing particular public health outcomes is a legitimate State aim, measures taken to achieve this must be both evidence-based and proportionate to ensure respect of human rights. When criminal laws and legal restrictions used to regulate public health are neither evidence-based nor proportionate, States should refrain from using them to regulate sexual and reproductive health, as they not only violate the right to health of affected individuals, but also contradict their own public health justification.

…with liberty and justice for all land owning white men…

Meta blogging, Homosexuality

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The last two missed posts were for the following reasons. Saturday I just never got around to it, I was watching some of the South Park marathon on Comedy Central. Sunday I decided that I needed to take care of some long overdue archiving around here, when I say long overdue, I mean like six months or more.

I managed to finish updating the April, May and June archives, which can be seen Here. I would like to say that I just finally decided to get off of my lazy ass and start catching up on things, but the truth is that some of the pages contained in those months didn’t upload completely, so I had a bunch of pages that had no links on the bottom. This only came to my attention as I was wondering why things that I had written about six months ago could not be found by search engines, even when I specified my own site and searched for a very particular string of words.

I would also like to say that the reason that I did it was so that someone searching for a particular topic through google would be able to happen across my site. That is at least partially true. The real reason is that I got tired of having to read through every post for the last six months when I was trying to link to something that I had said previously. Hopefully, I have at least fixed the problem with the partial pages, as this is the second time I have tried to remedy the problem and it is getting very frustrating.

A rather unexpected upside to being so lazy is that I didn’t have the slightest idea what I wrote all those months back. I remember having written some of the personal anecdotes from my youth, but as for the off the cuff, day to day bitching I just had no idea. It was as if I was reading something that someone else wrote for the most part, which was quite odd since I was able to find tons of grammatical errors that I never saw when I originally wrote it. Of course I have the grammar prowess of your average third-grader so I guess that is to be expected.

Most of the posts I just skimmed over to get a basic idea for a brief description, while there were a few that I read completely. The most amazing thing was that there were a couple of times that I actually laughed at something that I had written, the amazing part is that it was obviously meant as a joke.

• It turns out that my mother gave the URL of this site to the partner of my eldest brother (the homosexual one). I am not the type of person to hold back thoughts or words, even when I know that if I ever decide to go into politics they will sting me in the ass. The thing that I find very strange/amusing/comforting, is that the guy went ahead and read that particular post, which was on October 14. In that post I make a very feeble defense for homosexuality, why my brother’s partner found it to be good escapes me. Yet, then I realize that damn near half of the world, and probably 80% of the U.S. is against them, I can kind of understand why any endorsement of homosexuality is a good thing.

I think that what pisses me off the most about America is that we are so fucking stupid (as a whole). Men having sex with other men has been the norm since at least the time of the Greeks. All through history there has been homosexuality. Do you honestly believe that the men who came across the Atlantic Ocean to discover America kept it in their pants for four months? Do you really believe that men in prison simply abstain? If your plain crashed on the top of the mountain, no food, no water, would you start to look at the dead people as nourishment? While the last example is something that you certainly would do in the interest of self-preservation, the other two are stone cold facts.

• If it is my fault that everyone in the world except for me really hates homosexuals, all I can say is that I am sorry. If it is the fault of everyone in the U.S. for being intolerant…That sounds about right.

Homosexuality

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So, you know how I Often say that I don’t really have anything to talk about? That is certainly not true today. Whether I run out of steam before I get to the bulk of the bitching, though, remains to be seen.

• On the work front, I agreed to leave work an hour earlier than usual to go pick up a part for the bosses van, a part which I am sure they will ask me to install tomorrow. The unfortunate part of this transaction was that I said I would do it just for the money I paid for the gas to get there. Due to some unfortunate planning, I was driving directly into the setting sun, with a dirty windshield and the nearest ‘squeegie’ far enough behind me that I didn’t want to go back to wash the damn window. I did spray the window with the cleaner that is in your little ‘window squirter thing’ and turn on the wipers, only to find that one of the wipers had crumbled to dust, and the other one was only barely alive. I eventually had to pull over and use a rag from the trunk to try to clean the window enough that I could see at all. Even with the outside of the window cleaned up, I was still driving almost half blind, since the inside of the windshield has had a weird film over it ever since the car over-heated a couple of years ago (which made me run the heater to try to circulate whatever water was in the car). I guess what I really need to do is hit the damn thing with a bit of windex before I go volunteering for jobs that require me to drive into the sun. Perhaps I will do that this weekend.

• The real story today is going to be all about homosexuality.

I happen to have a brother that is gay. He is not being gay as a way to get back at his parents, he is not looking for attention, he is just plain gay. I, more than most, have developed a sort of tolerance towards homosexuality because of it. I mean it is pretty difficult to go out ‘gay bashing’ when you know that you have a family member who is just the same.

I have often thought that his being homosexual was a choice, but my wife emailed me This article from CNN that is making me finally think a little bit differently. Of course you could find a study somewhere to back up literally anything, but the odds that CNN is going to be posting incorrect information, on purpose, is pretty laughable.

One study does not a fact make, I understand that. What I do understand is that I have a brother that happens to be homosexual. That brother is still my brother. This same brother is trying to marry his partner, yet it is not allowed under state and federal laws. They are not trying to marry as a mockery of the “man/woman” union, they are trying to marry so that one spouse can be included on the other spouse’s health insurance. Why is it that that is not possible?

I understand that there are staunch beliefs, on both sides of the coin, about this type of marriage, but, who does it really hurt?

If two gay men do marry, there is no way that they can ever procreate. Convoluted laws will make it damn near impossible for them to ever adopt a child, they will be just “life partners”. Isn’t that the whole point of marriage? You pick the one person that you want to spend the rest of your life with? Why is it so wrong that one of the partners can’t pump out children?

I find it humorous to hear anyone talking about homosexuals trying to ‘bastardize’ the ‘sacred union’ of marriage. I bet, if you actually run the statistics on that, there will be very few homosexuals that ever divorce. Why? The homosexual people seem to be looking for the right person as opposed to settling for the person that is ‘close enough’.

A lot of hetrosexuals make tons of mistakes along the way (while looking for their perfect mate), that is because they are doing their best to just snatch up someone, anyone, before they are too old and no one wants them anymore. I think that the homosexuals kind of have it better in that respect. They have been looking their entire lives, have been shunned by society, and just want to find that one person that makes them happy.

Homosexuality is not a crime, it is not even a ‘condition’, it is what that person is. Loving another person of the same sex should not carry the taboo that it currently does, there are homosexuals that are brave enough to admit it everywhere, even children of those in the oval office.

Here I must actually site a particular quote from Dick Cheney, while being questioned about the homosexuality of his own daughter:

Cheneys Criticize Kerry’s Remarks on Daughter
“You saw a man who will say and do anything in order to get elected,” Mr. Cheney said. “And I am not speaking just as a father here, though I am a pretty angry father, but as a citizen.” The vice president went on to describe the Massachusetts senator as too vacillating to be commander in chief and unwilling to support American troops at war.

You see how he just avoided the question, then made it a question of homeland security? That worked for the first four years, not gonna work for the next four, at least I hope.

Why using the absolute, stone-solid FACT that the Cheney’s daughter is gay is ‘doing anything to get elected’ really escapes me. I think the fact that you do your best to hide it really says more about personal character…

It really must suck for Cheney, to be so opposed to homosexuals, having one as a child, then to find out that you aren’t even gonna be the veep any more. I bet we will see his ‘true colors’ shining through pretty soon…Mark my words…

Collection agency; News; Gay marriage

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I was thinking that when I got home from work today I would go ahead and finish off cleaning up the chaos that is the ‘computer room’. Instead, I got a letter in the mail from a collection agency regarding a long distance company that I have not had for several months. I did a quick check of my banking register to find that yes the amount in question was 103.53, and the check for it had been written and mailed forever and a day ago. I don’t keep my bank statements anymore so I had to get online to find the particular check (706 in this case) to make sure that it had been cashed. The company had cashed the check a couple of weeks ago, then turned me over to a collection agency without even sending me one of those demanding ‘final notice’ type letters. So, I called the collection agency to give them the information about the check, the date it was cashed and an offer to get a copy of the check emailed to them. She asked me to hold for a moment, I assume she was calling the referring company at that point, then came back on and said that the processing time for payments can sometimes be longer than expected, but noted that if I call her back in a week we can see if the problem has resolved itself.

I know that companies make this type of error frequently, I do not really hate them for it as it is just a clerical error that is usually quite easy to fix. What can their defense possibly be when you produce a copy of the check that they cashed? The thing that I find irritating is that she would not say that, yes, the company had cashed the check weeks ago and it was an error on their part to turn the bill over to collection. So will my credit report now show that I left the bill unpaid long enough for it to be turned over to a collection agency, while the reality is that the bill had long been paid? If that turns out to be the case I will likely be more than irritated, hostile perhaps. And honestly if they thought that I had not paid them, why not one of those lame courtesy calls that could have cleared it all up when I explained to them that they had cashed the check? I am not entirely sure if companies moving their call centers to foriegn countries is really working out all that well in that respect.

Hopefully this situation will not escalate to the point where I have to get the Attorney General involved. That may seem far fetched, but my wife had to do exactly that to get her cell phone company to finally admit that they had cashed her check. We still don’t know whose account they posted that payment to, but it certainly wasn’t hers and it took government intervention to get the matter cleared up. Now That is customer service.

• I haven’t posted many news items here lately since the only thing there seems to be to post is about prison abuse. Today, however, I found a few things that I am going to comment on, not because they are newsworthy but because they are humorous, except one.

I usually just read the headlines from Yahoo News, and the little story that they have there, if the story interests me I will go to a major news site and search for the subject. This has worked pretty well for me in the past, it seems that I may have been getting a lot of bogus information though.

The first instance can be found Here. It is in regards to drugs being used by participants in the Olympics. But read this quote:

Greene said Monday he stands behind the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency rule that can bar an athlete from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test. On Sunday, Jones said she would go to court if USADA held her out because of the rule.

I read that paragraph several times to make sure that I was seeing it as it appeared and not omitting any words. You see the thing is that most athletes get banned from the sport because they test positive for drugs. So is that saying that we actually require our Olympians to use drugs? If that is the case then perhaps the athletes in question should just smoke a joint and get re-tested.

This one is pretty good also. It is an article about states that are run by republicans raising taxes. And at quite an alarming rate:

Ohi o. Spending in the Buckeye state has risen 71% during the past decade, when Republicans have controlled both the governor’s office and the legislature. To fund this spending, Republican Gov. Bob Taft, backed by the GOP legislature, has increased the sales tax by 20%, upped the gasoline tax by two cents a gallon and increased numerous small business fees.

Wow. The sales tax here just went up by 2/10ths of a percent (city tax) and I found that a bit irritating. Imagine if someone suddenly upped your sales tax by 20%! That would likely be the start of a revolt. I think that what they mean is that if the tax there was 10% previously it is now 12%, yet since the tax itself is measured in percentage it makes it look like it would have gone from 10% to 30%. Perhaps they could have elaborated on that just a bit to let you know exactly what they were trying to say?

I have said it since day one, I don’t proofread. It may be a fault but it is all mine. I really think that a site as popular as Yahoo News should go ahead and do a bit of proofreading.

• Here is a news item that is just plain depressing. Dubya has decided to start attacking gay marriage again. Could there be a worse time for him to do it? Actually I guess the question should be could there be a better time for him to do it. A quote from the article:

Noting that he had called on Congress some time ago to pass a constitutional amendment banning such marriages, Bush said “the need for that amendment is still urgent, and I renew that call today.”

Hmmm. Makes me wonder why this is suddenly ‘urgent’. Maybe he actually has advisors that read the latest popularity surveys for him and let him know that he doesn’t have much time left in office? Imagine if they do get that legislation pushed through. In they eyes of all but the most hardcore right-wing supporters, the legacy of Dubya will be failing to finish the job that his daddy started and pushing western society back a few decades by making homosexuality illegal. How can anyone have a set of beliefs that are just so idiotic and be in control of the most powerful country on earth?

Well I guess that is about enough for today. Check back tomorrow for more of my cheery, happy writing.

Childhood prostitution averted

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Have you ever had one of those times when someone says something to you and it sparks a memory of some event in your life that you always thought you would never forget, only to realize that you had basically forgotten about it for at least ten years? I had one of those moments today. I don’t recall exactly what was said that made me remember the event, it had something to do with being followed by a car while on a bicycle. Anyway, for the lack of anything better to post I will recount this story from my past. I really shouldn’t, but has that ever stopped me before?

It all happened over summer vacation either the year before or the year after my freshman year of high school, come to think of it it must have happened before my first year of high school as I recall telling the story to someone in drafting class (which I only took my freshman year, elective class, easy A, what could be so hard about drawing a straight line when they require that you use a ruler?). Anyway, as I think about it that would make me a bit younger than I thought I was. Depending on what month it happened I would either have been thirteen or fourteen, either way still pretty damn young as you will no doubt agree.

I was at the little mall in Roseburg, OR. playing video games and ‘cruising for chicks’ in the sense that I was walking around the mall wearing the torn up jeans (with leopard print spandex under them), Def Leppard t-shirt and wearing a ridiculous hat that I got at the county fair. Mind you this was all status quo in the late eighties, I looked like damn near every other kid there. Because my dad didn’t really understand that the price of video games had gone up since he was a kid it didn’t take long to run out of quarters (on a side note, didn’t you just love Guantlet?). As I recall the last game I played that day was “720”, a game which I really sucked at, but I had to give it a try since it was one of the newer games there at the time.

I made one last round of the mall floor, which was really tiny by todays standards; you could get to any store within a minute from any entrance. Unable to find my one true love, I left through the Montgomery Wards where I had left my bicycle locked up. I unchained the bike and started to push it across the parking lot, as I think back I don’t have any idea why I wasn’t riding it across the parking lot, but that is how it happened. I heard a voice over my shoulder shout, “Hey.” I turned around thinking it was probably mall security wanting to give me a pat down, that was commonplace for kids my age at this mall. I asked what he wanted, and was quite surprised by his response.

“How would you like to make some money?” The guy asked me.

Again, in hindsight I should have thought this was a bit odd, but it was the summer and I had been doing odd jobs for a lot of dad’s friends. It was not uncommon that I would work in a yard for eight or ten hours and get only twenty dollars and a glass of lemonade, which was pretty cheap even way back then. So, being naive, I assumed that one of dad’s friends had told one of their friends, and that he somehow knew what I looked like well enough to pick me out of a dozen identically dressed kids my age at the mall. (that does seem pretty far-fetched, but this is how I remember it). So I asked him, “Doing what?”

I sure wish that I had a recording of what he said. I can remember the words that he spoke in vivid detail, I can remember every nuance of his voice. As I sit here typing I can hear it in my head just as if it were an audio file that I was playing on my computer. I will never forget the tone, and the absolute non-chalance of the way he responded with this quote:

“Well, gettin’ kinky, I guess.”

I said no thanks and got onto the bike, he shouted, in the middle of a parking lot, “I’ve got a hundred dollars for you and it won’t take but a half an hour.” I didn’t respond, just pumped the pedals as fast as I could. In my hurry to get away as fast as possible, I made a mistake that could very well have cost me my life, since you are reading this I guess you already know it didn’t, but I will elaborate anyway. There were two ways to get home from the mall, one was along Garden Valley Boulevard which was always dense with traffic and had a lot of stoplights. The other was much faster with no stoplights, but there was also no traffic, that was the way I chose to go, hoping to get home as fast as possible.

I was riding along stewing in anger about what had happened. I wasn’t frightened, as I recall, just violently angry. It was only about a ten minute ride home (well to the friend’s house where my dad was going to pick me up later that day) and I was about a third of the way there when the same guy pulled up next to me in a yellow Chevy Monza. He was keeping pace with me for a few seconds while I tried to ignore him, then he said, “I have two hundred dollars here.”. I was still not interested and just ignored it, knowing that I was only six minutes from home, and maybe three minutes from a very public street. Thankfully, he fell back. Whcich, again, should have been a tigger since I was on a bicycle and he was in a car, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

I had made it about another minute down the road when I saw the car pull up next to me again. The guy had in his hands a bunch of twenty dollar bills, fanned out, and said, “I have three-hundred dollars here, do you know how to play with yourself?” Even though that was more money than I would make for like a few years, I still declined in the only way I knew how, I yelled NO and kept pumping the pedals. Thankfully, for me, the guy then went past me and I never actually saw him again, though I did see his car again 😉 and that is something that I best not speak of here.

Whether the guy went back to the mall and found another adolescent to molest is something that I just do not know. Actually, considering that his car was still in the parking lot of that mall the next night, long after the mall had closed, may point to the fact that he did, or at least tried. When my friends and I were walking home from the roller skating rink the next night, we saw the same yellow chevy monza in the parking lot of the mall, it was the only car there. I grabbed a huge rock from the side of the road and threw it through the windshield. Try to molest me and there are consequences..

Thankfully, I guess, the guy that was pursuing me was only a pediphile. Had he been the type that would rape and torture children, only to toss the bodies over a bridge months later I would have really been fucked. The thing about that whole experience is that it really bolsters my hatred misunderstanding of homosexuals. I do not hate or fear homosexuals, as a matter of fact I have a brother that is homosexual. To my knowledge he has never cruised the local mall looking for barely pubescent boys to take home, if he has done that, my gun will be the first justice to reach him.

Had this been a woman in the same age group as the man was, (of course I remember him as being a geezer, but as I think back on it he had a full head of hair, a mullet actually, and I doubt that he was any older than 35-40 since he didn’t have much grey hair and a really smooth face.) I might not think of it as such a negative experience. Might have expanded my horizons…so to speak…

As I write it, it kind of makes me question what I hated more, the fact that the guy was a pediphile, or the fact that the guy was a Homosexual pediphile. Either way, death would be far too pleasant an option for someone like him. As I previously stated, the non-chalance that he used when he talked of sex made me think that he had done it before and would certainly do it again. I have no doubt in my mind that this guy is now in prison, and probably enjoying the experience, yet as an adult I have to wonder how we can keep freaks like him away from children.

If we had not been in the middle of a city (no matter how small), and had he the inclination to have an orgasm that involved a young boy, I really don’t think that he would have cared if there was life in the body of that boy. I am, of course, speaking from the perspective of someone who is not a pediphile and certainly not a necrophiliac pediphile, I am just saying that I was lucky to be approached by the one that didn’t turn me into part of the new house that they were building.

Pediphiles are one of the most troubling things in the world, in my mind. If you can go to visit a friend and see their child, say 8-12 years old, swimming in a play pool, if you find that erotic you need help. I may not be the most ‘stand up’ citizen in this country, but I certainly do not find it erotic when I see a five-year-old swimming in a pool. If you do fall into the aforesaid demographic, please kill yourself as the lynch mob will be quite unforgiving…

Gay marriage; Dinner with relatives

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In a fashion that is quite unlike me, I am going to do a news item here today, I am then going to comment on it, and it is also political. I hope I don’t sound like the uneducated oaf that I really am.

The article can be found Here. The center of it appears to be about gay marriage, but the actuality of that I think may be far different.

Bush’s call for a gay-marriage amendment came as the president sought to regain his footing after he was thrown on the defensive about issues ranging from his Vietnam-era military record to missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news – web sites ).
“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” the president said.

Answering Bush, Kerry said, “All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the United States at the start of his re-election campaign.”

“I believe the best way to protect gays and lesbians is through civil unions,” Kerry said. “I believe the issue of marriage should be left to the states”

What Bush said is just absolute crap. I mean honestly, if one must ‘Ammend’ the constitution to say that it is illegal for gay people to marry, that means that the constitution must be ‘changed’ to make that into a law. As for the part about “after more than two centuries of American jurisprudence” (which is a word he obviusly had to look up), exactly what ‘jurisprudence’ is he talking about? To my knowledge there have not been a lot of cases in court over the last two-hundred years that involved gay marriages. Even if there had been, I don’t really see how he could be trying to use that as a point today. I mean if you want to go back over the ‘jurisprudence’ of this country, you must also keep in mind that the people in Salem killed a lot of innocent people based on the testimony of three children who were being spoken to by spirits. Had the courts used that as a precedent, I think that the ‘Son of Sam’ would not have gone to prison for his killings, since he was being spoken to by the spirits also.

The judicial system, much like religion, place way to much on what has happened before, regardless of the validity of it. After all, it did take an ‘ammendment’ to abolish slavery. If they had just gone by what was written in the constitution we would all still either own, or work on a plantation in the South. Were they correct in adding this ‘ammendment’? Hell yes. Should there have been a need to? It seems so. The problem is that humans are keenly aware of now, but not so aware of the future. When those guys were hanging out drinking ale and talking about how the nation would be when they were in charge I am sure that they missed a few details along the way. But, homosexuality is as old as the constitution for sure, and probably goes back to the beginning of human history -to the time long before man actually understood how to conceive, and as such were likely just looking for any warm spot to put it.- And yes, that means that homosexuality pre-dates the bible, and that being the case I am not sure how one could use any biblical or judicial means to try to battle the sanctity or legality of it.

What comes into mind now is the religious nuts who will say that GOD made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. As per my previous statement, that is utter bullshit. Without going into an atheist lecture, I will just say that human life pre-dates the bible’s EDEN by at least 50,000 years. So if GOD did make adam and eve and put them there, he was putting them onto a happily populated planet that likely already had rampant homosexuality and did not see a thing wrong with it. Fast-Forward to the time of the Greeks, there was a lot of homosexuality there, though no marriage, just like a teacher/student relationship with benefits (for the teacher at least), and this was still the status quo. In fact, the more I think about it the HOMOPHOBIA (I mean sanctity of marriage) didn’t really come into being until well after the founding of the United States. If it was that big an issue when they wrote the constitution, don’t you think they would have thrown something in there about it? We are talking about the same people who said that the control of the militia over land, water and sky would be in their control(two hundred years before flight was even thought about). Yet, butt bashing somehow didn’t make it on there.

I have gone way off topic here. My point is that you should not try to use ancient documents to try to validate your point of view (I used to enjoy mentioning to christians that the bible states that in order to atone for your sins you must spill the blood of a sheep on an altar unto god. – they are quick to point out that when the blood of Jesus was spilled it was for all of our sins- but what if I was taking that book as literal, and I hadn’t gotten that far in the book yet? Boy, I would have been embarassed.

The reason that I quoted four paragraphs from that initial article is that I am now scared for the direction of our country. We all know that Bush is so right-wing that he has to have some tether to keep him from falling off, but when the leading Democrats are opposing same sex marriages what the hell are you supposed to do? This year will be the third time I have cast a vote for the President, and the first one didn’t really count. The last two elections I did a sort of “lesser of two evils” approach to my selection, and it worked wonderfully, except the elected president is still living on a ranch somewhere while we have a Kook in the white house.

The Gay Marriage issue just hit at the wrong time. I am sure that if this was not an election year the republicans would have gotten something slipped through congres to make it just go away. Now, the Democrats have to not want gay marriage also, and that is unfortunate. I try to believe that an elected leader would be more likely to do what is right for the majority of the country, the sad fact is that the majority of the country does not vote. The people who do vote are the very rich, very right- wing conservatives that I would as soon kill as look at. Thus we end up with tax breaks for the very, very rich, while at the same time raising taxes for the ‘rich but not quite as rich’, then giving a tax break to the welfare families…and tripling the deficit. As much as I hate Clinton, and also keeping in mind that he was in office during the technology boom, we had a budget surplus while he was in office, but we weren’t just running around the world looking for countries to declare war on while he was in office either. -countries that the U.S. could destroy, then give huge contracts to Bush’s oil field buddies to repair at a 500% inflated cost- ‘Hiel Bush’

Well, not a lot really happened today. I woke up, went to work, and busted my ass to try to get close enough to done with all of my work that I would be able to get off at 4 so that I could make it to dinner with some of my relatives. That all went as planned, thankfully.

I mentioned in yesterday’s update that these are people that I have not seen in at least fourteen years, and one of them could not even remember me from my father’s/her brother’s funeral. It was not icy at all though. We, my family, seem to be blessed with a really great sense of humor, so after it had all been silent for a minute or so someone just started to speak. It was an anecdote from long in the past, and involving my father, and happened long before I was born, but after that, it was like it was just yesterday that we had all done this last.

The dinner really went quite well, I even ended up with like three magazines about the London Bridge (the original one that they moved to Lake Havasu), and as it turns out the guy who moved that bridge over here is a Great Uncle of mine. So where is my paycheck?…

At any rate, I have spoken to these Aunts of mine only on rare occasions since my dad died. I had not seen either of them since 1990, but it was like we had never been apart (with the possible exception of the fact that the last time I saw them I barely had pubic hair, now I have gray hair, one gained a lot of weight, one lost a lot of weight, okay so you could tell by appearances that it had been that long, but the minds still work the same.)

What really surprised me was how well my mother was getting along with them. These are my Father’s siblings, yet they still had the stories to tell -which no one else at the table got- and they laughed like teen-agers. I found that surprising only because it had been more like 20 years (not counting dad’s funeral) since they had seen each other.

My wife was able to get involved by poking a bit of fun at me, which I don’t mind, and it got her into a conversation where it would have been her around damn near a dozen people that she didn’t know. I have long said you have to pick one that has both the mind and the wit – I actually believe that what I said was that you have to make sure she has the mind at the top and the elevator to get it there- at any rate, my relatives were hugging her at the end of the night.

If I had the kind of charisma that I could walk into a room and people would just gather around me, I might use that power to an evil end. Actually, I would definitely use that power to an evil end, I would just have to go on-line and see what ends are available for that particular power. If the powers don’t have x-ray vision I might not even care.

As it turns out, one of the relatives lives in Mesa (which is only about 45 minutes from here) and we were getting along quite well, to the point that he was setting up jokes and I was knocking them down. If he is this close, I am sure that we could -combined- sucker some of the other 5 aunts/uncles down here to at least say hello. I guess I will find out on the 6th of May, as yet another Uncle will be in the area and he wants to spend a day with me and the other guy in question. I want to get my brother (who is a year older and another 45 minutes away) to come up for what is turning into a boy’s day out kind of thing. The Uncle (who is really only a few years older than I am) is trying to make us go play golf, which I have never done and who knows I might like it.

The dinner went well for all involved. Unless my wife is just lying to make me happy, but, as previously stated, she knows how to get into a conversation, then take it over, then start issuing sub-conversations for you to work on as a group. Well, she didn’t do that, but if it had gone on longer, she likely would have started assigning tasks. That’s my woman.