A losing game

As a friend of mine said on Facebook today, "Today I learned that the internet is only for insensitive assholes. That's nice." While that's a bit of an overstatement, I have to say that I agree with the sentiment.

As we all know, Amy Winehouse met an untimely end at the age of 27 this afternoon. I was at the gym when I found out - actually I was in the locker room sweating from every pore in my body. While I had been on the treadmill, my Twitterfeed exploded with news of her death. There were tweets galore, many expressed sadness combined with a lack of surprise - understandable considering her very public struggles with substance abuse. But it didn't take long for the jokes about rehab to start and the judgmental "why should I feel sympathy for her" tweets and posts to start to pile up. Many people, rather than understanding that a 27 year old woman with family and loved ones - someone's daughter for Pete's sake - had died this afternoon, insisted on providing a snarky commentary based on their own presumptions and the version of her story that they created in their head. Perhaps their version of events may ultimately prove to be true. But at the time, it was completely inappropriate.

I was sickened by the jokes and snarky comments people made, by people's selfish behavior and refusal to understand that while Winehouse's death was certainly not surprising, it is no less tragic than if it had come as a complete surprise. A tremendous talent (admittedly, one that I didn't appreciate completely) was silenced and, as I said before, a woman not even 30 has had her life cut short.

I'll admit that back in 1994, when Kurt Cobain met a similar end, I was probably among the snarky ones. It didn't help that I was certainly no fan of Nirvana and I'm sure my take on it was "he was a junkie that deserved it." Well, I was 21 then, and with the benefit of 18 years, I'm ashamed of my behavior then, just like I'm sickened by those implying Winehouse "deserved" her fate or that somehow Winehouse's drug use made her death worth less or not worth mourning. To those people, I only have to remember the internet mantra..."too many anonymous internet assholes, not enough time." Only this time, they weren't so anonymous.

The world is full of pain and shit happens on a daily basis. Life is full of tragedies, large and small. It's how we deal with them that defines us. But more than that, it's how we feel for other people's tragedies, even if they don't seem that big to us that make us human. As I so frequently say, we just need to treat each other a little nicer. I wish I could say that in death, Amy Winehouse has received that respect that the dead deserve. Instead, it's been mostly vitriol and jokes that are simply, way too soon.

Her music will live on forever and there will certainly be a spike in interest. She won't be the first artist more celebrated after her death than while she was alive. Her short and tragic life is a reminder of the destructive effects of addiction and how, even though it shouldn't be, sometimes the addiction is stronger than the addict.

Your zombies are in my classic literature

I'm going to say right here and right now that I'm officially DONE with books that take a classic piece of literature and suppose that the simple insertion of hot zombie action will somehow generate something worth reading. I say this after an ill-advised attempt to read Alice in Zombieland. As one reviewer on Amazon put it, Alice in Plagiarism Land would be a more appropriate description.

The funny thing is that this book has pretty much everything that would make for a quick, fun, undead read. It's only 130ish pages, and not only does Alice meet all sorts of undead characters after she follows the Black Rat into a seemingly bottomless grave into zombieland, but Alice herself starts turning into a zombie. You can't go wrong, right?

WRONG. Heidi and I were talking about this and clearly, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain now so rubbish like this can be made without any repercussions. All this book did was take Lewis Carroll's original text and change words. At least Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which I didn't much care for either) had the decency to write some new parts and change things - i.e. instead of telling Mr. Darcy off after his marriage proposal, Elizabeth Bennet kicks his ass and basically leaves him for dead. This kind of stuff you see in Alice in Zombieland is just plain and simple lazy writing. It's almost a Mad Libs way of writing except I've read Mad Libs that make more sense and are more entertaining than this book.

So I'm doing the e-book equivalent of throwing the book across the room. And I won't ever fall for this genre again - it's going to have to work really hard to make me interested again. This is kind of sad because as someone who consumes pretty much any and all zombie content, I feel like turning my back on it just seems wrong. Plus it'll mean I never get to read this, but it looks like it's by the same publisher that put out the dreck that is Alice in Zombieland, so perhaps it's for the best.

And of course, all this talk about Alice in Zombieland just made me think about Alice in Pornoland which I wanted to link to but didn't because I couldn't find a SFW link. This is still a family friendly blog!

Grousing about Kylie

The good news: YAY! Kylie's touring North America.
The bad news: She's skipping the Midwest.

I was expecting to have to travel to see this show. As my friend Kyl said, we weren't exactly expecting her to play Wells Fargo Arena. I really didn't even expect a Minneapolis or Kansas City date. But the fact that there isn't even a Chicago date really burns me up. The argument has been made that she played Chicago on the last mini-tour in 2009, so she's skipping it this time around. OK, if that's the case, skip New York, L.A. and San Francisco as well.

The cities that she is playing really seem very random. Yes, all the major coastal cities are included - San Francisco, L.A., Boston, New York, Washington - but when you look closely at it, some of them make no sense whatsoever. I take exceptional issue with the fact that she is stopping in Atlanta, Orlando AND Ft. Lauderdale. What the hell? Three stops in two states but not a single one in the Midwest? And I know that Texas is practically its own country when it comes to size, but both Dallas and Houston? But still no Chicago.

Heidi and I were talking about it last night. OK, we were kind of spazzing about it, but give us a break. Heidi is staunchly opposed to flying, so the most reasonable city for us to go to is Dallas which is, oh, a THIRTEEN HOUR DRIVE from here. Doable, but is it really?

There are so many unknowns in this anyway. I may not be able to get the time off work. We may not even be able to get tickets. Then there is always the very real possibility that we simply won't be able to swing it financially. It's one thing for me to hop in an airplane and fly in for a concert, but when you factor in all three of us and meals and accommodations and what not, it gets pricey in a hurry.

I can't be mad at cute little Kylie, I mean really, how can you be? But the fact that I stand probably a 25% chance of seeing her live does burn my butt a little bit.

And if this is not the definition of a first world problem, I don't know what is.

It'll tumble for her

It all started with the mother of all crashes.

I was sitting at my computer catching up on blogs before heading to the kitchen to start thinking about getting dinner ready when, from the other room, I heard a most horrendous noise. It sounded like items sliding off a shelf. What began as a whisper soon became a roar as it became abundantly clear to me that something had gone seriously awry. I yelled out to Anna "Anna, what's going on?" only to hear her scream out to me for help.

I swear I was there in less than a second and could not believe my eyes. There was the entertainment center, on the floor face down. Everything had fallen out of it and Anna was underneath it crying and not able to move. I managed to lift up the entertainment center (which was the bulk of the weight) and pull her out from under it. After being pulled from the wreckage, she basically had the equivalent of an anxiety attack - talking about how she was afraid she had brain damage and that she was seriously injured. Her ability to walk and form coherent sentences pretty much ruled out brain damage and the fact that she could move pretty much everything made broken bones unlikely. But she was a bundle of nerves and acted like someone who had just had a near-death experience. This would be the point at which I would normally make a glib comment about the drama of being a 9-year-old, especially this one.

The truth is though, that it WAS a pretty big deal. She admitted that she'd been hanging on the entertainment center - something she's been told repeatedly not to do. I think she is unlikely to do it again. As Heidi said, she has a newfound appreciation for physics.

Our first job was calming her down. We got her into the tub and turned on her music and let her soak while we went down to assess the damage and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The contents of the entertainment center included: a not-quite-year-old $800 television, a couple of DVD players, a VCR (yawn!), the Wii, various DVDs, the Roku box, and assorted knick-knacks (the Cher doll being the most cherished.) When we put it all together, we were looking at nearly $2000 worth of electronic equipment that had a very high likelihood of being ruined. I will admit that I was not at my best at this point. Once we hooked the TV back up and ascertained that yes, it still functioned, I started to pull myself back together a little bit.

Piece by piece, we tried out each piece of electronic equipment. My prediction early on was that anything that had a laser would be destroyed. But the DVD player worked, as did the Wii. We didn't even bother hooking the VCR back up - heaven only knows when the last time we used it was. The Roku box, I fear, took a fatal blow. I still can't make that work but fortunately, we have the Wii to allow us to do our Netflix streaming.

All in all, we majorly dodged a bullet on so many levels. Naturally, the most important thing is that Anna was virtually unharmed. She has a scrape on her arm along with a pretty colorful bruise from where she was pinned underneath the entertainment center but otherwise, she is mostly just shaken up. The hardest part was trying to move the entertainment center, thinking that my child had been seriously injured while she cried and said she was sorry and admitted to hanging on the entertainment center. At that point, I didn't give a shit about the electronics, I just wanted her out from under there and safe and unharmed. It shook me up a bit, I must say.

As Heidi and I were reflecting on the evening, we decided that even if everything on there had been broken and Anna would have been safe, it would have been a huge win. It's a cliche yes, but that doesn't mean it's not fucking true. The fact that, in the end, only the Roku box was rendered non-functional is just gravy. Oh, and Cher's microphone is still MIA.

Glinda, however, will never be the same.


And here's a picture of the Humpty Dumpty, put back together again.


Not how I would have scripted the night had I been in charge, but hey, who ever said I got to be in charge?

Now pardon me while I go hug my kid.

Cat barf

I am tired beyond my capacity to even articulate it, but I can't go to bed. Not yet anyway, because I am waiting for the damn sheets to finish drying.

I got a text from Heidi right before I left work saying that there was "serious barf" on the bed and that she needed me to start the cleanup process. When she said serious, she wasn't kidding. Mia had gotten sick on our bed (as she has done several times in the last few weeks, always necessitating a complete changing of the sheets.) I started the washer at 5:30PM. It is 11:12 PM and the goddamn mattress pad is still drying. It really needs to hang out on a clothesline as it gets all bunched up on itself in the dryer and just doesn't dry right. I thought it was dry earlier and when I went to put it on the bed just now, it was so NOT dry I'm not sure how I thought it was earlier.

Truth be told, I'm so sick of cat barf I could just barf myself. But with five cats, cat barf is kind of a fact of life around these parts. And with Mia especially. It's kind of hard to get mad at her for barfing considering her terminal cancer. It doesn't make it any easier when you are trying to go to bed and you can't because a cat has unceremoniously puked all over your pillow and bed sheets 5 hours ago (FIVE!! Why are we still waiting for these sheets to dry?) but you try to put it in perspective. At least we're going to be afforded the luxury of being alive for what is hopefully a lot longer. No matter how you slice it, Mia is at the end of hers. We don't know when the end will come, but we're enjoying every single day we get with her because it really is a gift.

Even when she barfs all over the bed.

So for now, I'll keep cleaning up her sick because one of these days she won't be around to get sick anymore and we'll say "remember how Mia always used to barf?" and we'll laugh about it.

But right at this moment, I just want to sleep. And I think I'm going to go try now.

What mowing means

(this picture is not of my yard, just for the record)

I am nothing if not predictable - it's just about time for my annual mid-summer frustration boil-over with mowing the yard and pretty much everything that grows. So if you're not interested in that, I suggest you move on right now.

I went out to Target earlier this afternoon to go and print some digital photos from Heidi's recently found cell phone. While I was out, I noticed that the oppressive humidity we've had for the last week - the "air you wear" as we like to refer to it - had dissipated for the most part and on my way back, I thought "I really should mow the yard." Finding time to get the yard mowed this summer has required nothing less than planetary alignment between my work schedule and what seems like nearly constant rainfall and State Fair temperatures. And of course, said rainfall has left us looking like the Emerald Isle - the grass (and all the other plants in our yard) just won't FUCKING QUIT GROWING.

So when I got back, I put my headphones on and went out and started the mower. I put on a good playlist and got to work, but it wasn't five minutes before I was cursing like a sailor. For one thing, the mower smokes when I use it - I think because the oil-gas mixture I'm using is too rich, even though I followed the mixing directions to the letter. Also, since I can only get to the yard what seems like once a month, it's so tall that the mower constantly plugs up, which leads me to have to stop the mower and stick my hand inside of it and pull the wet, clumped up grass out and then restart it. Every two minutes, I'm doing this. No wonder it takes me so long to get it done. And then there was the humidity. As it turns out, it was still there. I wasn't even half done with the front yard and I had already sweat completely through my shirt and the sweat from my brow was running into my eyes. I used so many bad words, I was almost ashamed of myself. Almost.

As I have said on countless other occasions. I wouldn't mind keeping up the yard if I felt like it did one goddamn bit of good. I don't think it looks particularly good when I'm done with it. Mowing the back yard is like running an obstacle course between Anna's swing set, two bits of stump from a tree we had removed a couple years ago, and various vegetation we've planted. The front yard is something altogether different. Being shaded by a large old oak tree and several others, it actually has the opposite problem of the back yard. NOTHING grows up there. It still needs to be mowed, but you can't ever tell where you've been, so you end up going over the same territory over and over again. It wasn't so bad this time because there were so many leaves down from the storm last week, but still.

So the yard is a big exercise in frustration for me. As you might expect, it's not really the yard I'm mad at, despite my inclination to either set fire to it or to soak the sucker in Round-Up and kill every last piece of vegetation in sight. Mostly, I'm pissed at what the yard represents. My inability to keep the yard up in any sort of reasonable way is perhaps the biggest example of my failure as a homeowner. I feel like I'm missing the gene that is present in all the other suburban dads that spend their time out carefully pruning their shrubs or mowing every 3rd day. I don't care about it. I just fucking don't. And lacking that, what I really should do is hire someone to come and do it for me, but that's so not in the budget right now. So I persevere. I hate it, but I push through it and get it done. It's times like these that I miss the apartment days when someone else came and did all this stuff.

But as much as I say I don't care about, really, I do. I want it to look nice. I'm embarrassed to have people over because I hate how our back yard looks. There's a patch of weeds and thistles that has taken over the spot where the tree that we had taken out used to be. Despite my efforts to keep it cleaned up, it just grows back, usually with greater ferocity than it did before I cut it down. Weeds grow up from in between the cracks in the driveway. I try to keep up with it, but most of the time, it gets the best of me.

I'm so convinced that I have messy issues that I've conveniently wrapped up in being (literally) mad at the dirt. My hatred of the yard and its maintenance is not rational. This summer, admittedly, has been worse than others because I don't think I have worked the same shift two days in a row since May. I am also beyond exhausted from the summer (both physically and mentally) and just thinking about getting out there and doing it makes me tired. And I just fucking hate being hot and sweaty. There are times when being hot and sweaty has a pay off, but let me tell you how it's not when you're out doing yard work.

Ultimately, what makes it hardest is that I can't help but look at the yard and feel like I have failed at adult life somewhere. Outside summer projects taunt me in their chronic state of incompletion, but nothing gets me so much as the yard.

All in all, I need a bumper sticker for the mower that says "I'd rather be fucking snow blowing."

And that's what mowing is all about, Charlie Brown.

Headless

So the other day, I was doing a little bit of rearranging in my office. It's been a long time since I reorganized the shelves upon which so many of the pop culture/horror figures I've managed to collect over the years stand and I figured why not now? I had decided that I wanted to try to group all the Alien figures in one space on a short bookshelf next to my desk. I had just enough room and they were all standing comfortably next to Doctor Octopus my mom found at a flea market and the glow-in-the-dark zombies that I got for Christmas.

Standing comfortably until the other morning when I came back in from my shower to discover one of the Aliens had taken a head-first dive to the floor and gone from this:


to this:


I have always been a little bit disappointed with this figure even though he is highly detailed and very cool looking. It was a constant battle to get him to stand up, always trying to find the magic combination of standing on one foot, patting your head and rubbing your stomach in an effort to encourage him to stay upright. Up on the high shelf, he was very precariously balanced. He actually seemed to stand up better upon relocation to a lower shelf, but I can only assume the magnified vibrations of footsteps in the floor (not to mention the trains that go through several times a day) proved to be too much.

It's probably nothing a little super glue can't fix, but it still kind of sucks. I have half a mind to super glue him to his base to prevent this from happening again. But such a quick fix didn't stop me from looking for a better, more sturdy replacement. Sadly, there is not much to be had that doesn't cost a pretty penny. (The Dog Alien is especially coveted.)

So I guess until I get my lazy butt to Hy-Vee to buy some super glue, in space, no one can hear HIM scream.

My rhythm's (not) mow mow mow

We know that it's officially spring because tonight, I mowed the yard for the first time.

I'm a bit late to the party the year as far as mowing goes. I have a couple friends who have mowed a couple of times. My neighbor has mowed his yard at least that. Apparently on Sunday, when I was at work, the whole neighborhood was filled with the sound of mowers cutting grass. Heidi told me she felt like going out and starting the lawn mower just as a show of neighborhood solidarity.

It's not news that I hate mowing. I get no satisfaction out of it AT ALL. All things being equal, I'd rather be snowblowing - and after the winter we just had, that's a very strong statement. Part of the trouble is that lawn mowing in April is deceiving. Sure, it's all fine and dandy now when it's 65 degrees and 10% humidity. If it were like this all summer, mowing would just be a minor irritant. But give it another 6 weeks and I can guarantee you that I'll want to be mowing naked because I will be mowing in Dagobah. It never fails - one hour of mowing and I am a completely soaked and sweaty mess at the end of it.

I also think that a lot of my disdain for mowing has to do with my yard. We don't have the greatest yard ever, and I would say that it's not for lack of trying except that it really IS for lack of trying. Much like mowing, I get no satisfaction out of yard work of any kind. Mostly, I'm just hot and sweaty (again) and then add in dirty. Where do I sign up? Heidi used to do a lot of that, but with her pain issues, we're really leery of her doing that kind of work, so it falls to me. We also have this front yard that has what I refer to as the grass equivalent of a comb over. Grass barely grows because it's so shady so consequently when you mow, the grass isn't really tall enough to give you any indication as to what's been mowed and what hasn't. So what you end up doing is trying to get as much of it as you can and hope for the best. The good news is that the lilies of the valley that Heidi planted are finally starting to spread like the weed that they are, so our front yard actually looks better this year than it has in years!

I was worried about the mower as well - first of all because I couldn't remember the oil to gas ratio needed for the two cycle engine. I wrote down the model number and manufacturer and went in to do a Google search which gave me nothing. I went back out to look to see if there was a serial number on it and, lo and behold, the directions for mixing oil and gas were right there on the mower. Also, toward the end of the season last year, the mower started getting very temperamental - mostly in the form of not starting. Well, I'm happy to report that not only did the mower start this year, but it started on the very first pull of the cord.

No matter how hard I try, I'll never be a yard geek.

(and while we're at it, let's see the video for the song that inspired the title of this post)

When it rains, it snows

Apparently, after a month of daily posting, I'm reaching for the stars and going for a post every 5 days. But in my defense, I did work a run of 5 overnights and no sooner was that over than we got walloped by the first winter storm of the season which left 13 inches of the white stuff on the ground in less than 24 hours. This is big even for us - folks in the Dakotas and Colorado and Michigan would scoff at this, but it pretty much paralyzed the state. Anna STILL doesn't have school today, probably due more to the fact that the roads are not completely cleared.

It was made even more stressful by the fact that I went out last week to make sure the snowblower worked and it decidedly did not. Motherfuck, it was the last thing I needed. I figured that it was probably a clogged gas line or something, but I tried putting some fresh gas in it anyway and again, nothing. So I left it and decided to mess with it later. When later arrived, I noticed that there was a large puddle that looked suspiciously like gasoline underneath the snowblower. Since we had surpassed my abilities in dealing with it, it looked like I was going to have to take it in and have it serviced. Of course, with the "storm of the century" (as the local news was calling it despite the fact that there are still 90 years left in this century) bearing down on us, every place was swamped with repair requests.

When I was out there dropping it off, the guy showed me how the blade was damaged from years of use and how it was probably reaching the end of its life. I told him to try to get it running anyway, thinking that I'd limp by another season on this on and then save next year for a new one, because if there was any one thing I couldn't do, it was plunk down the cash for a new snowblower.

Well, the universe usually conspires to teach you a lesson, even (and especially) when you close your ears to it and the next day we woke up to snow coming down and rapidly deteriorating roads. I called out to the repair place and they said they'd probably have it done by 3pm, which was fine, but Heidi and I decided to stop out there after dropping Anna off at school. We talked to the guy and he proceeded to explain to us how we were looking at a couple hundred bucks worth of repairs AT LEAST. At that point, it was becoming clear to us that fixing it would ultimately result in throwing good money after bad so we made the decision right then and there to buy a new one.

It killed me to spend the money, but what are you going to do when they're talking about 10-14" of snow and you have a 100 foot long drive to clear?

In the end, we bought a mid-range Toro and even that cost a small fortune. However, it cleared the snow quite admirably over the last couple of days. It also started right up each time I tried it (electric start - I was not compromising on that) and here's hoping that it lasts until Anna's graduated from college.

If I had known that I was going to be buying a snowblower, I never would have replaced our TV the day after Thanksgiving. But you win some and you lose some. In the ultimate example of the law of averages, working all those overnights will end up just about paying for the snowblower (I worked a crapload of overtime covering those shifts). Easy come, easy go. I was hoping to buy something a little more sexy with all that extra cash, but I'll settle for functional.

As bad as they said it was

Against my better judgment, but because I just had to see it for myself, I Netflixed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over the weekend. This movie was eviscerated by reviewers during its theatrical release, but that didn't stop moviegoers from making it the most successful film of not just the summer but of all of 2009. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

So it was with these expectations that I watched it, most of it yesterday and finishing it up this morning. What can I say about this movie that has not already been said? At nearly 2.5 hours in length, it is certainly a lot of movie. But the funny thing is that I just got done watching it and it has completely evaporated from my brain. I can't recall a single point at which the plot moved forward. Mostly, I just recall the grinding of metal, robot characters I couldn't identify and human characters I couldn't be bothered to care about.

This is one of those instances where the reviewers were right on the money. This movie is not recommendable, not even in a so-bad-it's-good way. There was a point earlier this fall that I entertained spending a buck and a half and going to see it in the dollar theater, but after having seen this monstrosity, I'm so glad that I didn't. Without the ability to fast-forward through the atrocious dialogue and interminable battle scenes, I'm not sure I would have made it through the movie.

For me, the most damning thing about the movie was my inability to stay awake during the final battle scene last night. There I was, watching what was supposed to be the the most exciting (and probably most expensive) robot-vs.-robot scene in the movie and I couldn't keep my eyes open. It was with 15 minutes left in the movie that I turned it off and went to bed, saying to myself that I'd just finish it up in the morning. I'll forgive a lot of things in the name of seeing something cool on the screen, but this was more than even I could take. In so many ways, it was like watching a cartoon - even more so than the middle third of King Kong (the Skull Island part). I never believed that the robots were really there.

But perhaps the largest source of disappointment is that, no matter how much they may have co-opted the name and the image, these are NOT the Transformers of my youth. I was probably just a little bit too old for Transformers by the time they really hit, but I still liked them enough and I did watch the cartoon series after school. But the Transformers shown in the movie resemble the classic toys only in passing. They are ridiculously complex and (as has been stated by many a reviewer) it is almost completely impossible to differentiate one from another. During the battle scenes, it's just flying metal and you have no idea who to root for besides no one so that they will all die and the pain will end swiftly.

The biggest discrepancy between toy and movie comes in Devastator, the combination form of the Constructicons. I have a nearly complete Devastator on a shelf in my office - the only Transformer that truly remains from my youth. The movie version of Devastator vomits all over that, turning this:


into this:

I mean, seriously! We can put anything on the screen these days and this is what we get? Shameful.

I've learned my lesson. No way will the inevitable Transformers 3 reel me in.

There's something about marriage

I got home from work last night just in time to watch the initial results trickle in from Maine. Although many issues were on the ballot last night, the one we were all watching was the referendum on marriage equality - the so-called "people's veto." The state legislature in Maine approved marriage equality last summer, and the governor signed it into law, making Maine the 5th state in the US to grant marriage rights to all its citizens, not just its heterosexual ones. No sooner did this happen than those opposing it started rallying the troops and put the rights of a minority to an up/down vote.

We all know how it turned out, even though it was a real nail-biter for awhile. 52% of those voting chose to strip Maine's gay and lesbian residents of the right to marry, and in so doing, ripped away the privileges that all those in heterosexual marriages take for granted. Although these results make me sick, the fact that the majority was allowed to vote on whether or not a minority gets to have certain rights makes me even sicker. It is safe to say that most of those who voted yesterday in Maine's election were not gay or lesbian, yet here they are, determining what gays and lesbians should or should not be able to do, many (but not all) driven by fear, misinformation and religion which honestly have no place in making policy decisions.

One of the most frequent arguments I hear against marriage equality is that "it's against God's law!" I'm always amazed to hear that. I do not currently identify as a Christian, so that argument holds not one drop of water for me and the millions of others who do not subscribe to either an institutionalized religion or even to the simple concept of a God. Talk about forcing your beliefs on others. That's not to say that all Christians are against marriage equality - quite the contrary. There are many examples of that in Maine and elsewhere. What I would remind those that would be so quick to judge based on what their religion tells them to do is to remember the Great Commandment: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. And yes, that includes your gay or lesbian neighbor whether you like it or not.

It is not until people who enjoy the invisible privilege of being in the majority are prevented from deciding that other people are second class citizens or not worthy of the same rights that they currently enjoy that this nonsense will finally stop. I think that will eventually require some kind of US Supreme Court decision which is certainly a long ways off. There was no up/down vote to abolish slavery, nor was there a ballot initiative asking that women's right to vote be rejected after it was granted. Were we to propose either of those, I'm sure it would elicit gasps of incredulousness from those who voted to reject Maine's marriage equality law. But there is no difference. Civil rights issues are civil rights issues.

I hope that the No on 1 people take this through the courts now. It is certainly an option, and one that will likely be heard. It is the job of the judicial system to protect a minority from the tyranny of the majority. While my choice of words may seem overdrawn, you may want to ask a same-sex couple in Maine if they feel that I'm being dramatic in my word choice. Chances are high that they'd feel exactly the same way. And in case you're wondering why I give a shit, as I'm neither a resident of Maine nor gay, and I currently enjoy all the benefits of a legally recognized marriage, it's about being empathetic for your fellow humans, especially those that may be experiencing a different life experience than you. Just because the system is working fine for you doesn't mean that it's working well for everyone.

Maybe it's time to get rid of marriage altogether, to chuck that word on the scrap heap of history so that those that oppose equal rights for gay and lesbian couples can stop being hung up on it. I'll gladly redefine my relationship with my wife so that my gay and lesbian friends can enjoy the same rights I have. But if we did that, those that oppose marriage equality would be forced to look at the real reasons that they oppose equality, which I bet are 100 times uglier than the religious beliefs they hide them behind.

There's no doubt that this will fade from the news cycle by the end of the week, but remember that here in Iowa, we're gearing up for a new legislative session and those that oppose the marriage equality we have here in Iowa will have a new target in their sites. To those of you reading that live within the state, I encourage you to donate time or money (or both) to One Iowa. Hell, do it even if you don't live here. The fight in Iowa is going to look a lot like the one in Maine. Outside money will pour into the state (admittedly, on both sides), and unless our Democratic leadership in the statehouse hold fast, opponents of marriage equality will demand a vote on a Constitutional Amendment here in Iowa, which is a much bigger deal than what was passed in Maine.

Time is ultimately on our side. Opposition to marriage equality will look antiquated in 50 years. But that doesn't mean we have to wait for it. And I will continue to do my small part to make sure that all citizens will be equally protected under the law.

Struts, pout, cut it out

Last night when I went to put the car in the garage, I noticed that it was making kind of a funny noise. I filed it away and said to myself that if I heard it again today I would take the car in. Well, we drove down to Des Moines today and I still heard it and since it was only 3:00 by the time we got back to Ames, Heidi took the car to Car-X while I went to pick Anna up from school in the truck. Then Anna and I went to pick Heidi up. They said that they would call us today with the diagnosis.

I am not a big car head and don't know exactly what all is wrong but basically, the bottom line is that the noise I heard is unrelated to an incidental finding that IS a big deal. Before we went on our trip this summer, the guys at Car-X told us that our struts were in need of eventual repair. It wasn't a dire situation - and it certainly didn't have to be done prior to the trip. They gave us an estimate that was around $700 parts and labor and figured I'd have it done early next year since, as I indicated, they didn't think it was something that needed to be done right away.

Well, apparently it needs to be done right fucking now. If we don't do it, it'll ruin our back tires.

So in addition to fixing the mystery noise in the front of the car, which runs around $170 parts/labor, tack on another $700 for the struts and you're looking at nearly a grand. But really, I shouldn't have expected anything less of this year. We have easily put $4,000 in general upkeep, repairs, etc. into this car this year, but believe me, it's still cheaper than a car payment and it's the first year that we've really had this kind of expense.

In an attempt to dull the sting of what is money sprouting wings and flying away, I've been trying to put the silver lining on all of this. At least we didn't drive the car to Chicago for Kylie, only to be finding ourselves doing this at a Car-X in Chicago. At least we investigated it today before we drove all over kingdom come this weekend. At least I am off work for a few days so that the logistics of car drop off and pick up didn't all fall to her. At least it wasn't 2000 dollars.

But it still sucks, especially moving into Christmas. But I'm also over it. Next please.

The thing is, time was

One of the ways that an iTunes library will always be inferior to physical CDs, records, tapes, etc. is that songs are much more likely to get lost in a sea of music when they are digital files. Even on my iPod, which contains about 25% of the music on my computer, I really favor probably a 10% chunk for frequent listening. There are so many hidden gems in my iTunes library that have simply been lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, I found a song this morning that I had forgotten about and I immediately added it to my favorites list. It is The Williams Brothers "Some Become Strangers". Actually, in my world, it's their cover of Stevie Nicks' "Some Become Strangers", but that is not really accurate as they wrote it, even though Stevie recorded it before them. I have spent the last 15 minutes looking for an embeddable version of their video for the song, but I can't - a state of affairs I always find utterly ridiculous. Anyway, I think it's gorgeous, moody and very autumnal. Watch it here. Seriously. Do it.

What I think is funny about this is how similar and different it is from Stevie's version, which she recorded for Rock A Little in 1985. Listen to Stevie's after you listen to theirs and you'll see what I mean.



I can't decide which I like more - obviously I have much more history with Stevie's version. I think it's funny how there's differences in nearly ever line of the first verse between the two versions. Plus I love the Stevie stamp of "I don't really need this in my life! / Why don't we forget about it?" at the end of the bridge which the Williams Brothers wisely did not use.

I am trying to find a copy of the album this song came from but - to no one's shock, it is not available for download on either Amazon or iTunes. The only copies for sale are used copies. I will NEVER understand why anything is out of print now. The artists will not make money off of sales of used copies, whereas if they put it up on iTunes for $7.99, I would have already purchased it and they would have my money. But the record companies are too busy going after 30 second song samples to actually be paying attention to what consumers want. (Earth to the music industry, that's called FAIR USE!)

Anyway, this is a perfect song for this gray weekend. Hopefully I can find some more of their music.

(I found their second album, The Williams Brothers, on iTunes hidden amongst the discography of the gospel group of the same name!)

Whither goeth LiveJournal

So have you heard that LiveJournal might go under? Rumors are swiriling, bur really, it's hard telling. It doesn't really matter all that much to me as the LiveJournal account I have is used for one of two things - commenting on other LiveJournals and the rare occasions where I simply must post something that I don't want on the Blogger blog. The only reason I would not post something on the Blogger blog is if it is something I deem too sensitive, too personal, and/or when I am not in the least bit interested in a public explosion of anger and emotion and would prefer to do it in a more controlled environment. That has happened exactly 5 times in the last 2 and a half years.

However, I know a lot of people who are dedicated LJ users, not the least of which is Heidi. But many other people I know use LJ and really like it. Unfortunately, there is no really quick and easy way to back up Live Journal - something that I am finding all too apparent tonight. I have been trying to import Heidi's LJ into a Blogger account and all the tools I have been trying to use have been failing. The LJ2Blogger tool that I was trumpeting on Facebook earlier today is not nearly as functional as I was hoping. An attempt to install an updated version of it failed miserably. So then I went and used the "export blog" function on LJ which allows you to export a month at a time to an XML file. Blogger failed to recognize it when I tried to import the XML file there, but Wordpress did. Only trouble there is that it is not formatted for shit and I will have to go in and do a bunch of highly laborious formatting to make it look nice. And add to that, I'm not sure any of the pictures went across.

I think that the rumors of the death of LJ are very premature, but still, it never hurts to back something up, especially something that you've put 3+ years in to. I know that I have this blog backed up on Wordpress in case the unthinkable happens. It's not like it'd be the end of the world as we know it if the blog up and disappeared, but I would be sad. It is something that I am kind of attached to and even though I sometimes go back and read posts (especially from the early years) and cringe, it is a reflection of me, for better or for worse. And to have it disappear would be like losing a little part of me, silly as that may sound.

So I will continue to endeavor to back up Heidi's LJ. If I have tremendous success, I will let other fellow LJers know.