A good editorial from Slate about the “unintended” consequences of the Virginia marriage amendment. Baking bigotry and small-mindedness in our state’s Constitution is a bad idea. It will put undue pressure on families, more of which fall outside the traditional definition of the nuclear family than fall within it.\
Creating great new chasms for people to fall into is not a way to strengthen marriage. Paying attention to your own marriage and keeping your nose out of everyone else’s would be a fine way to start. Us heteros have no right “defending” marriage when our divorce rate is already over 50%. Like Jesus says (paraphrasing here), “work on the beam in your own eye before pointing out the speck in your neighbor’s.” Codifying this nonsense is ridiculous.\
Vote no, people, vote no! The only thing that can “defend” marriage is good marriages. You can’t force that on people, and discrimination isn’t going to help anyone.
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The Virginia “Marriage” Amendment
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Hobbes Says, “Don’t Forget to Vote!”
Remember, election day is next Tuesday. No matter what party you’re in, this election is important. Get out there and send a message to whoever it is you’re trying to send a message to. For me, it comes down to a couple issues that are important to me:
- George Allen is President Bush’s lackey, voting with him 96% of the time.
- President Bush is incompetent and his party has no spine to stand up to him. They’ve proven over the last six years that they’re more interested in power than doing what’s right.
- The GOP is beholden to the Religious Right, and that’s wrong on so many levels. Most importantly, they’re standing in the way of stem cell research, which is unconscionable.
- They refuse to admit that Iraq was a mistake when the evidence is overwhelming that the President and his Administration lied, and continue to lie, about their incompetence, the reasons for going in, and their plan for success. Saying you’ve got a plan and declaring your loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld is not a plan. It’s willfully ignorant and stubborn. If I wanted a child as President, I think Max would do a better job than Mr. Bush and his playground bullies.
- What used to be the party of smaller government and less intrusion on our lives has become the party of Big Brother, and I don’t mean the TV show. They’ve wiped their asses on the Constitution, and it’s time they paid for it.\
It’s pretty obvious who I’m voting for. Vote for whoever you think will do the best job of governing. See ya on Tuesday!
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Calvin and Hobbes
The boys were the illustrious Calvin and Hobbes for Halloween this year (Max’s idea). Max was actually dual costumed, being both Calvin (seen here) and Spaceman Spiff. Lots and lots of pictures are over here. Brian totally dug Halloween and lasted much longer than Max when it came to trick-or-treating. His bucket came back full and then he hung out with us on the step stealing candy from his Aunt Heather and trying to blow out the candles in the jack-o-lanterns. Fun was had by all.
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Bush is a criminal
I am voting for Jim Webb for Senate, but more as a vote against Bush than anything else.\
“Hypothetically,” which is worst, a racist or a sexist? -
Webb for Senate
Jim Webb is running against George Allen for the Senate. If you’ve ever read this blog before, you probably know who I’m voting for, but in case you haven’t, I’m voting for Mr. Webb. The only thing you need to know about George Allen is that he votes with the President and the Republican majority more than 96% of the time. He’s part of the problem, part of the same corrupt crew of suck ups that led us into Iraq, created record deficits and enabled the most corrupt Congress in our lifetimes.\
He doesn’t deserve to represent Virginia, and he doesn’t deserve our votes. He hasn’t introduced any meaningful legislation and actually stole legislation from another Senator and presented it as his own.\
So, George Allen: crappy senator. It really doesn’t matter who’s running against him, voting for Mr. Allen is a vote for more imcompetance, more graft, and more rubber stamping of the President’s lunacy.\
I think the choice is pretty easy. -
Huge HTML News
This is huge. It’s going to change the future of the web for the better, and that’s a damn good thing. I have a lot more to say about this, but I’m still at work and it’s Friday night.
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Vast Tracts of Time
I have so much vacation time that I haven’t used (I’ve taken a grand total of four days of vacation time all year), that I have to take off a huge chunk at the end of the year. How much time? My last day of work for 2006 is December eighth.\
I’m sure Jen will find stuff for me to do, but I’m looking at the calendar at those vast tracts of time and thinking that I might just have time to finish my “class project” (my “hey, let’s learn Ruby on Rails project) and launch it. -
Dick rocks!
Kevin finally watched Veronica Mars last night so I can post all of my favorite lines and points, but eh, it’s so three days ago and I just don’t have the energy. Kevin laughed so loud at some parts, I am sure the kids way upstairs could hear him.\
I still loved all of Dick’s scenes. It’s interesting to see how the actor who plays Dick started out as a glorified extra, with a breakout performance of “Logan!” (HA!) that gradually got him a starring role. In S1, Logan was the jerk who reminded Veronica how far she’d fallen. Then the writers made Logan so wonderfully complex & layered, the actor was so charismatic, and he & Kristen Bell have so much crackling chemistry together that the character moved from ‘one-dimensional jerk’ to leading-woobie-man-status. So the writers made Jerk 2.0 in the form of Dick. Much to the happiness of that actor, I am sure. He gets all of the great, amusing, memorable, and politically insensitive lines that Logan used to get.\
Someone at TWoP posted this as one of their favorite lines: She came in with a guy. She’s falling asleep on my magazine rack and he’s trying to scrape together enough change to buy provolactics.\
And this is the conversation it spawned:\
Me: I am not sure what a provolactic is. Is that the type of birth control they use in Utah?\
Friend 1: It’s not birth control, it’s the name for Utah mothers who breastfeed.\
Me: Hahahaha.\
Friend 2: Huh. I thought it was cheese for the lactose intolerant.\
So tell me, internetters, what is your definition of provolactic? -
Unexpected Truths
I was in an interview today (update: not for a job for me, I was interviewing them to do a job for AOL), talking to a design and development shop (who will remain nameless) about their work and other assorted web-nerdery (flash vs. html, accessibility, localization, etc) when I asked them about the different DOCTYPES they use and why they didn’t just pick one and stick with it. Here’s how the conversation went.
- Creative Director: Yeah, we pick based on client needs and stuff… We’re pretty anal about standards and stuff. We’re geeks, and you know, geeks love anal.
- Me: That’s going on a t-shirt.
He didn’t get it right away, which is probably a good thing. I wish every interview went that well.
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Yea, baby!
I am totally in love with Dick.\
Who’s with me?\
Other Veronica Mars thoughts:\
This ep had the look and feel of season one. Very dark, literally, which is awesome. And Veronica was back to pissing people off, alienating herself as she investigates. Super yay to that. The show needs to keep up this angle. But, um… she has a picture of the rapist? So, the mystery is solved now? I seriously doubt that, but this picture bit confuses me.\
On a totally shallow note- I dislike that the actress who plays Parker got to keep her hair while the other rape victims are showed without hair. They could have at least put Parker in some fake-looking wigs.\
In Gilmore Girls news- They are rerunning quirky town storylines! The great pickle smell of ’06 is the same as the rotten eggs of… whenever that was. Boo to that. This ep proved that they can get rid of Luke. And the stupid Aerie girls need to go. And yay for Logan in the flesh.