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April 2005

April 30, 2005

Yeah me!

I finished the last paper of the semester and sent it off today. I still have four exams to go, one of which is a take-home exam in two parts, each of which expects lengthy arguments with full citations (that means I basically have to write two more short papers, all under the guise of a take-home exam). But since I've been going non-stop for the past few weeks, somehow managing to beat the odds and somehow get everything done on time, I decided that I should not do any more schoolwork today.

So of course, since I decided to put off schoolwork for the day, I cleaned all three floors of the house! Am I sick or what? Well, I wanted things to be nice when my grandma returns on Thursday night, and I won't have any other chances before then. So I cleaned the house. Fun, fun.

I also got caught up on my e.mails. That was a big task. They've been building up for almost a month, and I haven't felt like I could take the time away from all of the school crap to get to them, so with a lot of time and a lot of patience, I actually got caught up on my e.mails ... at least for the moment.

I'm about to relax and read for a couple hours (relaxing reading, not something I have to read for a class), a nice treat for myself. Tomorrow will see me back at the grind, working on that take-home exam and longing for the damn thing to be done. It'll be one more step closer to the end of this semester, and that's been a long time coming.

Posted at 8:36 PM

April 29, 2005

Damn, I am so sick of writing fucking papers. When will it end?

Posted at 10:52 PM

April 28, 2005

Somewhere pigs are flying. Maybe in the frozen corner of hell. Who knows ...

I managed to pull off the unexpected miracle I mentioned a couple of days ago. I'm not out of the woods yet because I still have work due tomorrow and work due Saturday (by e.mail) before I can take a couple hours as a breather (I'll still have four exams next week to prepare for, so I'll only really be able to spare a couple hours).

Today was a big thing. I was up at 4:30 AM again after all too little sleep, and after getting cleaned up I had to do final revisions on my final project for my Advanced Tech Writing class. Once I got to BG I gave a presentation for that project, which was a formal proposal, and I was told that I had done a great job of putting everything together. I followed that class by going to all of my last lectures in each of my classes, and then I did final revisions on the paper that was due today for my World War II history class. Then I had to upload a bunch of files to my professors and catch up with my World War II Discussion Board. I even had time after that - and before dinner - to outline the other paper I have to write for my World War II class (that's the one due Saturday). I even found decent quotes that will support what I've outlined. So even just by the standards of the classwork I got done today, I rocked.

After dinner, though, and a little rehearsal, I went to the Thursday night Poetry and Fiction Reading series, where I was one of four Senior BFA students to give our readings. I read second out of the four of us, and I wasn't very nervous at all. I talked about each poem a bit before reading it, and I covered, in order: Ravenous, You Self-Righteous Fuck, Baa, Frankly, Play Again?, Solitary, Villain L-, Professor, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain, [for autumn spectral], and Mean Accommodations. I had a great time, got a number of good laughs from the audience, and got a solid round of applause when I was done. The amazing things was that everybody came up to me after the reading was done to tell me how much they enjoyed by reading of my poems. I mean everybody. The head of the Creative Writing department, the past head o the department, my advisor, the co-editor of the Mid-American Review, and just about every student there, including a bunch of people I have never met before in my life.

Most shocking, wonderful, and ... awkward ... was the appreciation offered by the most gorgeous young guy I've seen in years. I'd never seen him before tonight and he had seriously caught my eye well before he congratulated me on my reading, and as I shook his hand and said, "Thank you; Thank you very much," I became almost terrified that the smile on his face would dim if I shook his hand too long or seemed to creepy for staring at him too long. Damn he was beautiful - simply amazing. Even at my prime he would have been way out of my league. I could have just sat and memorized every minute detail of him if I could have, but I knew that I just had to let go, so after I said my thank yous I let go of his hand and, with a smile, moved on to speak to the next person.

Part of me's kicking myself for having not just said, "You are absolutely the most gorgeous young man I've ever seen." Another part of me's thrilled that he complimented me and actually stayed to tell me. And another part of me was afraid of being alone and feared losing him already, before anything could have even occurred.

You do realize that this means I'm insane ...

Posted at 1:22 AM

April 27, 2005

Is this what death feels like? Or do you feel livelier when you're dead?

I'm guessing that you feel livelier since you get more of a chance to sleep.

Posted at 7:51 PM

April 26, 2005

"... and it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insa-a-a-a-ane."

Yeah baby. Let's do the Time Warp again.

Posted at 10:30 PM

April 25, 2005

It will be a true miracle if I get everything done that needs to be done by Friday. Either that or I need to somehow magically learn how to live without sleep. But that would pretty much be a miracle, too. I'm not counting on anything (well, except maybe a well-timed aneurysm to put me out of my misery).

Ain't life grand.

Posted at 9:56 PM

April 24, 2005

Kill me. Please. Anything to not have to write another paper.

Posted at 8;41 PM

April 23, 2005

I imagine you're all starting to hate me. You're probably thinking, "Can't this jerk take the time to actually write something rather than post some damn newspaper article?" Well in answer to that question the answer is "No, I don't have the time. I'm a miserable human being who's using every available minute to try to get all of the shit done for this last week of classes, and I'm barely keeping up."

And if you have no sympathy for that, at least accept that these are really excellent opinion columns that I think are worth reading.

These two columns (one and two) are companion pieces condemning far right wing conservatives for trying to hijack America. These columnists are sure to be painted as left-wing cranks, but what they've got to say is very true. Read and see.

Hijacking Christianity . . .

The American flag was appropriated by the political right wing years ago. Now the Christian right is trying to hijack religion. This time it shouldn't be allowed to happen without a fight.

In 1969 I returned to the United States from Bonn with my family after working for three years on issues directly affecting the security of American interests. It was the height of the Vietnam War. What did I find when we reached home? The flag had been taken over by self-styled patriots, noncombatant domestic supporters of the war and vocal opponents of the civil rights movement. Nixonites and George Wallace supporters were sporting flags in their lapels and stickers on their cars. Old Glory had been appropriated as the exclusive property of those who believed in "law 'n' order," a hard-line foreign policy and the primacy of conservatism in American politics.
It didn't help that some Vietnam War protesters stupidly burned the American flag. But what really ensured the loss of the flag to those who fancied themselves as having a monopoly on patriotism was the failure of equally patriotic Americans on the left and the middle to have any stomach for a fight.

Emboldened by their appropriation of the flag, ideologues on the right have now set their sights on religion, and specifically Christianity, as the means to promote their political agenda. And as the promoters of tomorrow's "Justice Sunday" national telecast have demonstrated, there is no depth to which they won't sink in their campaign to seize the country.

The statement by one of the sponsors of tomorrow's event, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, is an example of the Holy War that is being launched by the right. In one of the most outrageous smears to be uttered by a so-called religious leader, Perkins said that "activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups . . . have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms." That is an unmitigated lie that should not be allowed to stand.

Which judges are out to rob Christians of their heritage? That is religious McCarthyism. Perkins should name them, provide evidence of their attempted theft of "our Christian heritage" or retract that statement with an apology. Don't count on that happening.

Angered by Democratic opposition to some of President Bush's judicial nominees, Perkins's group has also put out a flier charging that "the filibuster . . . is being used against people of faith." To suggest Democrats are out to get "people of faith" is despicable demagoguery that the truly faithful ought to rise up and reject.

But will that occur in American pulpits tomorrow? The Christian right counts on the religiously timid to keep their mouths shut. So why not exploit religion for their own ends? They will if we let them.

And that's just it. Americans of faith -- and those lacking one -- ought to vigorously resist attempts by power-hungry zealots to impose their religious views on the nation. That means standing up to them at every turn.

It means challenging them when they say of Americans who support a woman's right to choose; the right of two adults to enter into a loving, committed, state-sanctioned, monogamous relationship; the right to pursue science in support of life; the right of the aggrieved to launch aggressive assaults against racism, sexism and homophobia, that they are not legitimate members of the flock. Where do those on the religious right get off thinking they have the right to decide who is in and who is out? Who appointed them sole promoters and defenders of the faith? What makes them think they are more holy and righteous than the rest of us?

They are not now and never will be the final arbiters of Christian beliefs and values. They warrant as much deference as religious leaders as do members of the Ku Klux Klan, who also marched under the cross.

They should be resisted, not pandered to by politicians. Case in point: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Republican leader is going to appear by videotape at tomorrow's self-pity party. He shouldn't. But if he does, Frist should use the occasion to tell the assembled that they are wrong in saying Bush's nominees are being blocked because they are people of faith. He should say that invoking Christianity as an instrument to advance a political agenda or to vanquish a political opponent is divisive, demagogic and beyond the pale in American politics. And if Frist shows up on TV and passes on the opportunity to place his party on the side of tolerance and goodwill, then his performance will be Exhibit A in the case to be made against his presidential quest.

The Bergen Record in Hackensack, N.J., editorialized that the attempt by the Christian right to dominate all three branches of government "has to frighten anyone who is not a Christian conservative. It should frighten us all." Baloney. It should make us mad. Fighting mad.

 

. . . Smearing Christian Judges

People calling themselves Christians are gathering once again for a crusade against what they consider to be the secular humanist subversion of Christian values. This time the object of their wrath is the judiciary. In the wake of the fanatical and fruitless assaults against the judicial system for letting Terri Schiavo die, the Family Research Council will convene tomorrow what it calls "Justice Sunday," a live simulcast to pit Christian values against "our out-of-control courts."

The burgeoning assault on the American judicial system by right-wing Christians is an integral part of their attack on "godless" secular humanism. According to them, secular humanists nurture a culture that promotes abortion; encourages gay marriage; prohibits prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance in permissive schools that indoctrinate students with Darwin's "theory" of evolution; preaches moral relativism; and generally threatens to subvert the Christian foundations of the republic.

What these self-avowed Christians do not acknowledge -- and what the American public seems little aware of -- is that the war they are waging is actually against other people calling themselves Christians. To simplify: Right-wing and fundamentalist Christians are really at war with left-wing and mainstream Christians. It is a battle over both the meaning and practice of Christianity as well as over the definition and destiny of the republic. Secular humanism is a bogeyman, a smoke screen obscuring the right-wing Christians' struggle for supremacy.

The assault on the judiciary is especially revealing. The vicious attacks on Judge George Greer, the Florida jurist who presided over the Schiavo case, reveal the bizarre nature of right-wing Christian fantasies. A regular recipient of hate mail and threats against his life that required him to walk to court with an armed marshal, Judge Greer is a lifelong Southern Baptist, a regular in church and a conservative Republican. None of those credentials protected him from the assaults of fellow Christians, including messages saying he would go straight to Hell. What he found "exasperating," he told a journalist, "is that my faith is based on forgiveness because that's what God did. . . . When I see people in my faith being extremely judgmental, it's very disconcerting."

Nearly all of the demonized judges are, in fact, practicing Christians, not secular humanists. Perhaps half of them are Republican appointees, and at least that many regard themselves as conservatives. In addition to Greer, most of the judges of the 11th Circuit who upheld his rulings, as well as most of the Supreme Court justices who declined to intervene, consider themselves Christian. And so it goes around the country, even including many, if not most, of the judges in the California-based 9th Circuit, the regular object of President Bush's ridicule. And, lest we forget, Charles Darwin himself was a serious Christian.

The history of a Christian church divided against itself is a long and bloody one. People calling themselves Christians have stood for war and peace, subjugation and brotherhood, communism and capitalism, privilege and equality, enslavement and liberty, imperialism and isolation.

That is one reason Thomas Jefferson insisted on religious liberty in the new republic. In his Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, he wrote that "millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity."

The present war within the Christian fold is perhaps more threatening to the republic than any of the previous intramural disputes. Right-wing religious zealots, working in partnership with the secularists who have advised President Bush, are a threat to the most fundamental of American principles. The founders of our nation welcomed and planned for spirited debate over public policies, including the role of the judiciary. But as sons of the Enlightenment, they looked to found a republic in which the outcome of those debates would turn on reason and evidence, not on disputed religious dogma. They planned wisely for principles that are now under wide assault.

All Americans, of whatever religious or non-religious persuasion, need to be on the alert to preserve those principles. The burden falls especially heavily on the mainstream Christians who are slowly awakening to the gravity of the challenge facing them. Too long tolerant of their brethren, too much given to forgiveness rather than to confrontation, they need to mount a spirited, nationwide response to what constitutes a dangerous distortion of Christian truths and a frightening threat to the republic they love.

Posted at 10:18 PM

April 22, 2005

Bush is making the world a much more dangerous place, and he's doing everything he can to withhold that information from you. I have to tell you - none of this comes remotely as a surprise.

Bush Lies, America Cries
This just in: Global terrorism rates are higher than any time since 1985. Thanks, Dubya!

by Mark Morford

Oh my God I feel so much safer. Don't you?

I mean, don't you feel so much more secure in your all-American gun-totin' oil-happy lifestyle now that we have wasted upward of $300 billion worth of your child's future education budget, along with 1,600 disposable young American lives and over 20,000 innocent Iraqi lives and about 10,000 severed American limbs and untold wads of our spiritual and moral currency, all to protect America from terrorism that is, by every account, only getting worse? Nastier? More nebulous? More anti-American?

Here's something funny, in a rip-your-patriotic-heart-out-and-spit-on-it sort of way: Just last week, BushCo's State Department decided to kill the publication of an annual report on international terrorism. Why? Well, because the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985. Isn't that hilarious? Isn't that heartwarming? Your tax dollars at work, sweetheart.

Lest you forget, this is what they do. They trim. They edit. They censor. BushCo kills what they do not like and fudges negative data where they see fit and completely rewrites whatever the hell they want, and that includes bogus WMD reports and CIA investigations and dire environmental studies and scientific proofs about everything from evolution to abortion and pollution and clean air, right along with miserable unemployment data and all manner of research pointing up the ill health of the nation, the spirit, the world.

In other words, if BushCo doesn't like what comes out of their own hobbled agencies and their own funded studies, they do what any good dictatorship does: They annihilate it. Now that's good gummint!

Let's be clear: The obliteration of the National Counterterrorism Center report merely goes to prove what so many of us already know -- that BushCo's brutish and borderline traitorous actions since they leveraged 9/11 to blatantly screw the nation have done exactly nothing to stem the tide of terrorism -- and, in fact, have, by most every measure, apparently increased the threat of terrorism. In other words, the world is a more dangerous place because of George W. Bush. Is that clear enough?

Let's put it another way: Under Bush, in the past five years, the U.S. has made zero new friends. But we have made a huge number of new and increasingly venomous enemies. And no, they don't hate us because of our malls, Dubya. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They don't hate us because of our low-cut jeans and our moronic 8 mpg Ford Expeditions or our corrupt Diebold voting system that snuck you into office.

They hate us, George, because of our policies. Anti-Muslim. Pro-Israel. Oil-uber-alles. Anti-U.N. Anti-Kyoto. Anti-planet. Pro-war. Pro-insularity. Pseudo-swagger. Bogus staged "town hall" meetings stocked with prescreened monosyllabic Bush sycophants. Ego. Empire.

But here's the truly sad part, the hideous and depressing and soul-shredding part about all those young kids in the U.S. military right now, all those mostly undereducated, lower-middle-class kids, most of whom aren't even old enough to buy beer and many of whom have barely had sex and many who got sucked into the military vortex in an honest attempt to help pay for a college education so they could go out and not find a decent job in this miserable economy. The sad part is all those kids in the military who've been trained/brainwashed to believe they are serving in Iraq to protect America's freedom, to protect us from, well, something dark, and sinister, and deadly. When in fact, they're not. Not even close.

The truth is, we were never under threat from Iraq. There were never any WMDs, and Bush knew it. Our military is protecting nothing so much as our access to future stores of petroleum, nothing so much as helping set up a giant police station in Iraq to ensure surrounding nations don't get all uppity about just who controls the rights to those oil fields.

So let's get honest and just ask it outright: Is this a worthy use of the massive bloated machine that is the U.S. military? Of the largest and most advanced fighting force in the world? To protect the flow of oil to the most gluttonous and wasteful and least accountable developed nation on the planet? Is this worth so many young American lives?

You already know the answer. Ask any oil exec. Any government economist. Any BushCo war hawk or auto manufacturer or the leaders of any major manufacturing industry. Ask the president himself. They all say the same thing: You're goddamn right it is.

Here, then, is the warped, convoluted irony: We went to war under the lie of a Saddam-fueled terrorism threat that never existed. We are at war, instead, to protect our oil and to establish regional control, an act that, in turn, has destabilized the Middle East even further and is actually inciting much of the very terrorism we were ostensibly there to battle in the first place, thus producing a level of anti-U.S. hatred not even a (still alive and apparently very chipper) Osama bin Laden could have wet dreamed. Isn't democracy fun?

We are not "spreading democracy" by invading Iraq. We are not giving a gift of a more peaceable Iraq to a grateful world. That is merely insidious Republican PR spin. Right now, the U.S. military is, in short, protecting your right to a $3 gallon of gas, which will soon be $4 and then maybe $5 and $6 as we are running out of the stuff faster than anyone thought and the fight for that which remains will only turn uglier and more violent and so I have to ask again, do you feel safer?

Because if you say yes, you are, quite simply, lying. Or delusional. Or you have had your brain edited by BushCo. Or those are some mighty powerful drugs you are obviously taking and you might wish to consider switching to aspirin and wine and Fleshbot.com.

They say that violence is the last refuge of a desperate nation. And violence under the guise of secrecy and outright lie such as BushCo has foisted upon the nation is the last refuge of a nation of thugs. Yes, I'm looking at you, Rummy. I'm looking at you, Cheney. I'm not looking at you, Karl Rove, because looking at you makes my colon clench and looking at you makes birds die and looking at you makes small children feel hopeless and lost, like the world is full of black venomous hate and bilious condescension that is aimed squarely at their heads, like a gun.

It's true. We are living in a nation run by overprivileged alcoholic frat boys and power-mad thugs. This much we know. This much we need to be reminded of, over and over again, until we finally wake up.

Ah, but there is good news. There is always good news. The good news is, they are now confiscating all cigarette lighters at the airport. In the name of safety. In the name of homeland security. In the name of America, apple pie, babies, puppies, Jesus and guns. Lighters are now forbidden on all air travel. I mean, thank God. I feel safer already.

Posted at 10:17 PM

April 21, 2005

Incredible. No matter how good the news is in the gay rights struggle, it can never stand alone as good news without some counterbalancing bullshit from the Nazis ... I mean the Conservatives.

Connecticut approves same-sex civil unions:
State is first to back unions without court influence

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) -- Connecticut on Wednesday became the second state to offer civil unions to gay couples -- and the first to do so without being forced by the courts.

About an hour after the state Senate sent her the legislation, Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed into law a bill that will afford same-sex couples in Connecticut many of the rights and privileges of married couples.

"The vote we cast today will reverberate around the country and it will send a wave of hope to many people, to thousands of people across the country," said Sen. Andrew McDonald, who is gay.

The state House passed the measure last week but amended it to define marriage under Connecticut law as between one man and one woman. The Senate approved the amended bill Wednesday 26-8. The law takes effect October 1.

"I have said all along that I believe in no discrimination of any kind, and I think that this bill accomplishes that, while at the same time preserving the traditional language that a marriage is between a man and a woman," Rell said.

Vermont is the only other state to allow civil unions. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry. But those changes came about after same-sex couples won court battles.

Last summer, seven same-sex couples sued in Connecticut after being denied marriage licenses; the case has not been resolved.

Roman Catholics and other activists plan a big rally Sunday in opposition to the bill.

Marie Hilliard, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, said the civil union proposal "got more legs than we ever hoped it would get." About 44 percent of the state's 3 million residents are Roman Catholic.

Brian Brown, head of the Family Institute of Connecticut, said his group intends to keep the issue squarely before the public.

"Our mission will be to let every person know in the state of Connecticut which lawmakers voted to redefine marriage, and which lawmakers voted to protect marriage," he said.

Anne Stanback, executive director of Loves Makes a Family, said her group would probably begin talking to lawmakers about gay marriage -- though she acknowledged it's not likely the issue will be taken up next session.

"As important as the rights are, this is not yet equality," she said.

 

Texas Says Gays Can't Be Foster Parents

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Texas could become the only state to bar gays from becoming foster parents under legislation passed Wednesday by the House.

The ban is part of a bill to revamp the state's Child Protective Services agency. It passed 135-6 with two abstentions and now heads to the Senate.

The foster parent amendment is not included in the Senate version of the legislation, but that body could accept the House bill.

"It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children, and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual," said Republican Rep. Robert Talton, who introduced the amendment.

If the House version of the bill becomes law, Texas would be the only state to prohibit homosexuals and bisexuals from becoming foster parents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian and Gay Rights project. Texas doesn't ban gays from adopting children.

Arkansas had barred gays from becoming foster parents, but a judge said the law was unconstitutional in December.

Under the Texas House bill, anyone who applies to be a foster parent or a foster parent whose performance is being evaluated must say whether he or she is homosexual or bisexual. Anyone who answers yes would be barred from serving as a foster parent. If the person is already a foster parent, the child would be removed from the home.

Talton wouldn't comment Wednesday, but during debate on the bill the day before he said, "I don't think it is right for young children to be exposed to this type of behavior when they are young and innocent."

Eva Thibaudeau, a social worker, said she and her partner of eight years have adopted four children and have served as foster parents to 75.

"I am just so hurt and surprised, especially now (when) we are facing an ongoing crisis of not having enough resources to take care of foster children," she said.

Randall Ellis, executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas, estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 children could be affected.

"The truth is that a parent's sexual orientation has no negative consequence on the children that are raised in those homes," he said.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry does not want the child protection bill to get bogged down with a "side issue," though he believes marriage is between a man and a woman, spokeswoman Kathy Walt said.

The bill to overhaul the system follows recent child slayings that occurred after caseworkers investigated suspicions of neglect or abuse and decided the children were safe to remain with their parents.

It would give all of Child Protective Services' foster care and case management duties to private companies, which already manage 75 percent of foster homes in Texas.

Posted at 11:04 PM

April 20, 2005

Is the fact that I'm struggling to get things for my classes completed in time the reason that I'm fucking hating writing these damn papers?

Maybe it's the fact that I'm being given the most inane topics imaginable and having to somehow write something compelling based on that.

Or it could be that it's having to write a new one of these damn things pretty much every other day and having to spend the intervening days reading various things to keep up.

Or maybe it's that I'm stupid and can't get this shit done without having to struggle forever to get anywhere.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's because I just don't fucking give a damn and just want to disappear and say, "Fuck it all!" to absolutely everything.

Hell it could be anything ... but it sure ain't workin', whatever it is.

Posted at 9:11 PM

April 19, 2005

Ah, Spring! When a young man's mind turns to depression.

Posted at 5:45 PM

April 18, 2005

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. As I was surfing the web this morning, hitting my usual sites, I was shocked to see that Adobe will be absorbing rival graphics/web software rival Macromedia. I first saw the news on MacCentral, and I quickly checked Adobe and Macromedia's sites for more details. They basically said nothing more than the press release, and that left a whole bunch of questions unanswered for anyone who uses their products.

It wasn't just me with these questions. As the day progressed and the news became widespread, on CNN and everything, others began asking my same questions and worrying just as I was. The users' forum was full of shock and doubts and even the MacWorld editors were concerned.

The big questions are what products will continue to live. Adobe and Macromedia both have a great stable of fantastic products, but many of them have been in direct competition for years. Adobe has its now-ubiquitous Reader, of course, and that has no competitor, and Adobe's InDesign page layout program similarly has no competitor. Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for photo manipulation and has no real competitors. Macromedia has the widely used web-animator Flash and the less-widely used but well-liked Director, as well as Macromedia's ColdFusion, web server software which is no longer a direct competitor to Adobe's LiveMotion since they stopped supporting that program a couple years ago - almost certainly these couldn't possibly be dropped. However, Adobe Illustrator competes directly with Freehand, a long-standing Macromedia product with a very loyal following. My guess is that Freehand will cease to be updated after the buyout and will die. Personally I like Illustrator better, so this isn't a huge deal, but Freehand does have a lot of great differences. The big question in my mind, though, is what will happen with Adobe's GoLive and Macromedia's Dreamweaver. Both are powerful web page design programs with big followings. I personally use Dreamweaver for everything with this site. I have both programs, but GoLive is awkward and not as straightforward as Dreamweaver. If any of the two companies' products are an exact match for what they offer, these are the two, and one is certain to go. Will Adobe keep it's own product, GoLive, or will it go with Dreamweaver, the product with more widespread appreciation? I can only hope that Dreamweaver will last, but who's to say? Certainly not Adobe or Macromedia, at least not in the press reports.

Part of me is nostalgically remembering the first Adobe products I used and the first Macromedia products I used. I've even been remembering Adobe's acquisitions of certain companies years ago, such as Aldus, who were huge names in the industry. When Adobe bought Aldus they supported the Aldus line of products for a while, but most everything was eventually discontinued and abandoned, the best features from them incorporated into Adobe products before they were left to the wayside. I, and many others, certainly have concerns about what this all means. It could be great, a wonderful combination of visionary giants, but it could also be a horrible step backward that cuts out good alternatives in a market with already very few options. We'll just have to see.

This frightening mess of links is partially done to mock people who fill their blogs unbelievably with links.

Posted at 9:56 PM

April 17, 2005

Ugh! Make it end!

Posted at 12:20 AM

April 16, 2005

I dread the eventuality that the Republicans will try to rename every street, building, and bathroom in America after George W. Bush the same way they have on and off tried to name every damn thing after Ronald Reagan. I can think of nothing more vile that naming anything after Fuehrer Bush ... until today.

Amusingly enough, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have become the namesakes for three new species of slime-mold beetles. Nothing, in my mind, could be more fitting a tribute.

Bush has slime-mold beetle named after him

ITHACA, New York (AP) -- Not just anybody can say he has a slime-mold beetle named in his honor. But George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld can.

Entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly B. Miller, who recently had the task of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles, named three species after the president, vice president and defense secretary.

The monikers: Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, Agathidium cheneyi Miller and Wheeler, and Agathidium rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler.

According to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the first word of a new species is its genus; the second word must end in "i" if it's named after a person; and the final part of the name includes the person or persons who first described the species.

Naming the beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld was intended to pay homage to them, said Wheeler, who taught at Cornell University for 24 years and now is with the Natural History Museum in London.

"We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular," he said.

Wheeler and Miller, who was at Cornell and now is a postdoctoral fellow at Brigham Young University, published the names in the March 24 issue of the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

Posted at 1:09 AM

April 15, 2005

Surprisingly enough I was able to finish all of the massive amounts of reading assignments I wanted completed today. That's not to say that I didn't scrape by just barely with enough time, because I read constantly all day and didn't even end up eating dinner until nearly 9 PM. Still, getting next week's reading done helps keep me on track and sets me up to have tomorrow to write a paper, Sunday to write another paper, and Monday to create my proposal/project for my Advanced Technical Writing class. It would certainly be nice to have time to relax for once, but that's apparently going to have to wait until after the end of the semester.

I'll give myself plenty of credit for having the perseverance to keep working on all of this crap without a break, but I can't minimize the importance of decent sleep last night. For the first time in at least a month I got 9 hours of sleep, and it was a wonderful thing. With any luck it will be only the first of a few nights straight of full sleep. That's my hope anyhow.

Posted at 10:56 PM

April 14, 2005

I had a weird experience today. I had to use a microfilm machine for the first time in a whole lot of years, and I only vaguely remembered how to use them. As it turns out, I would have been completely lost without help because the machines I used today were tremendously advanced technologically over the old microfilm machines. The basic operations were indeed still the same, but the controls were all much more automated (mostly) and part of the machine scanned what you needed before sending it to a laser printer. With a small amount of help (which is all that the girl could offer me - she seemed largely unfamiliar with the machine, too), I was able to catch on to the changes quickly and it was pretty fast and simple when I got my bearings.

The odd experience was when I realized that I was learning new gadgetry and technology for utilizing a completely outmoded and archaic system of what once was the dominant method for archival storage. The paradox of high-tech archaic systems boggled (and boggles) my mind. I'm sure I'm making more of this than's reasonable, but it was really startling to me.

Posted at 11:06 PM

April 13, 2005

I'm struggling madly against time to get finished with my third and final paper for my Vietnam War class. It's due tomorrow, and since I have to get up before dawn to get ready and get to classes, I have no real time to work on it tomorrow. I'm pretty much done now, after a full day of work on just this paper (in addition to what I did on it yesterday), and I just need to go through it a few times to tweak out the little changes that'll make the difference.

I did on a positive note, finish the book I had to read for my World War II history class before the end of the deadline for this unit. I still have to read through and post to the questions and answers on the message board for that class, and past experience suggests that that will take a few hours at least to get through. I have 'til Friday for that, technically, but my prof expects me to answer his questions and respond to my classmates, so I'm expecting to spend just about all of the time tomorrow after school as well as some time on Friday finishing that off.

I also have to do some research at the library tomorrow, and I have to talk to somebody at Financial Aid. Then I get to "sit back" and read hundreds of pages from various books on Friday if I'm to keep up. Wah! All this crap to do really sucks.

Posted at 8:57 PM

April 12, 2005

I'm becoming more and more firmly convinced that the constant attacks upon homosexuality must be met equally with an outright war against conservative extremists, stolid Republicans, and any so-called Christian that thinks spouting hatred and intolerance was somehow part of the message of their savior (although a thorough review of the New Testament of the Bible in no place finds a condemnation of homosexuality by Jesus nor does he call for anything but the promotion and celebration of love (which, to simplify this, is the opposite of hate)).

If gay people have money invested in straight companies, they should reinvest it in gay companies only. If gay people know a business has anti-gay policies they should stop patronizing that business. If gay people are confronted by some conservative bigot, they should get in the bigot's face and berate them for being promiscuous, fucking around in extra-marital affairs, and divorcing faster than they marry. Gays should also scream out at any straight person they see touching a child, calling social services immediately to arrest a breeder who must obviously be a pedophile (because statistics do show that the majority of pedophiles are straight people). Gay people should also attack Christians for their anti-American ways; after all, Christians invariably want to take away the freedoms of all people to live their own lives free since they see it as their mission to convert everyone in the world to their religion and beliefs or, failing that, to kill them (Christians seem to think that worked well with every aboriginal culture on earth, and they have now redirected their crusades against gay people).

This is war, folks. Pure, unrestricted war. We may not have started it, but we damn well will finish it. My fucking patience has run out when I continually have to see bullshit like this and this every fucking day of the week.

Right Wing Groups Declare Open War On School Gay Days

(New York City) Irked by the success of the nationwide Day of Silence, which seeks to combat anti-gay bias in schools, conservative activists are launching a counter-event this week called the Day of Truth aimed at mobilizing students who believe homosexuality is sinful.

Participating students are being offered T-shirts with the slogan "The Truth Cannot be Silenced" and cards to pass out to classmates Thursday -- the day following the Day of Silence -- declaring their unwillingness to condone "detrimental personal and social behavior."

The driving force behind the Day of Truth is the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group that has opposed same-sex marriage and challenged restrictions on religious expression in public schools. The event is endorsed by several influential conservative organizations, including the Christian ministry Focus on the Family and the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Mike Johnson, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney from Shreveport, La., said organizers were unsure how many students would participate in the Day of Truth, but expressed hope it would grow in coming years as more people learned about it.

Johnson said the event is meant to be "peaceful and respectful," but made clear it is motivated by belief that homosexuality is wrong. "You can call it sinful or destructive -- ultimately it's both," he said.

The event is designed as a riposte to the Day of Silence, which began on a small scale in 1996 and is now observed by tens of thousands of students annually at hundreds of schools and colleges across the country.

Most Day of Silence participants go through the school day without speaking -- a tactic for drawing attention to the isolation and harassment experienced by many gay students.

Since 2001, Day of Silence observances have been coordinated by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a New York-based organization that also has worked to support gay-straight alliances at high schools across the country.

Kevin Jennings, GLSEN's executive director, said he doubted the Day of Truth would gain a following and stature of any significance.

"The Day of Silence was an event conceived of by students themselves in response to a very real problem of bullying and harassment they saw on their campuses," Jennings said. "The Day of Truth is a publicity stunt cooked up by a conservative organization with a political agenda; it's an effort by adults to manipulate some kids."

Underlying the dueling events is a fundamental disagreement over the rationale for the Day of Silence. GLSEN and its allies say the silent protest is specifically targeting harassment of gay students, while the Alliance Defense Fund and other conservatives say GLSEN's agenda is to broaden national acceptance of homosexuality.

"No one is for bullying and harassment," Johnson said. "But that's cloaking their real message -- that homosexuality is good for society."

Echoing the stance taken by defense fund lawyers in several court cases, Johnson said teachers and students critical of homosexuality have been pressured to stifle their views while at school. They cite the case of a San Diego-area high school student, Chase Harper, who was disciplined last year for refusing to change out of a T-shirt that read, "Homosexuality is Shameful."

"We wouldn't have come up with the Day of Truth if Christian kids hadn't been silenced in the first place," Johnson said. "The public school is part of the free market of ideas -- if the other side is going to advance their point of view, it's only fair for the Christian perspective to present their view, too."

The Alliance Defense Fund is anticipating that some students who try to participate in the Day of Truth may be admonished by school staff. Its resource kit includes a hot-line number, with attorneys on call to provide legal advice about free-speech rights on school grounds.

Jennings said GLSEN had no ambitions to keep schools free of all criticism of homosexuality.

"There always should be a place in our schools for respectful differences of opinion -- we don't expect everyone to agree, or even to like each other," he said.

But he questioned whether the Alliance Defense Fund and its allies were committed to constructive dialogue.

"I don't think they believe in pluralism," he said. "They feel they have the truth and everybody else should buy into it."

According to GLSEN, 84 percent of gay and lesbian high school students experiences verbal harassment on a regular basis at school, and 40 percent experience physical harassment.

 

Senate Schedules Gay Marriage Amendment Hearing

(Washington) The US Senate will begin hearings Wednesday on a new attempt to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment to bar same-sex couples from tying the knot.

The issue will be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. The subcommittee has title the hearing "Less Faith in Judicial Credit: Are Federal and State Marriage Protection Initiatives Vulnerable to Judicial Activism".

The amendment was introduced in the Senate in January by Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard. It would deny marriage to same-sex couples and deny the ability to provide any protections to same-sex couples, such as domestic partnerships and civil unions.

It is the same measure as Allard sponsored in the last session. That attempt failed in July on procedural grounds. (story)

The House version also died partly due to disarray within the GOP. (story)

Following the House vote last year Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) vowed the issue would be resurrected. "We will come back and come back until this is passed," DeLay warned. (story)

Among those slated to testify before the subcommittee Wednesday is Kathleen Moltz, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Dr. Moltz, along with her partner, are suing the state to protect Dr. Moltz's domestic partner health benefits in the wake of a state constitutional amendment adopted in November defining marriage as being between a man and woman.

Michigan's attorney general has advised that the constitutional amendment bars state and local government from providing domestic partnerships benefits - including health insurance - to their employees. (story)

"The truth is now being revealed: these amendments are being used to deny health care benefits to millions of hard-working gay and lesbian employees and their families," said Christopher E. Anders, an American Civil Liberties Union Legislative Counsel. "Gay and lesbian workers deserve the same benefits provided straight couples in the workplace, no more or no less. But the Federal Marriage Amendment seeks to deny those equal rights by writing discrimination into the U.S. Constitution"

Human Rights Campaign's Deputy Political Director Chris Labonte added that, "amendments denying rights to same-sex couples have already resulted in families losing their health care, and in Utah and Ohio, there have even been cases of straight and same-sex unmarried couples being stripped of domestic violence protections. Anyway you put it, these measures are bad for the country. Sadly, this is another example of the far-right trying to control Congress for their own political agenda, instead of focusing on issues that help strengthen the country."

Posted at 10:54 PM

April 11, 2005

This is clipped from Andrew Sullivan's blog. Read all that is herein contained. It's both roundly amusing and truly appropriate. Here's Andrew's lead-in:

The residents of this small town voted 984 to 113 to deny gay couples any protections for their relationships whatever. Even hospital visitation rights. The man who set up the town's newspaper website, a man who calls Atwood his home, is now one of the undesirables. So he's taking down the website. And letting his neighbors know what it's like to be declared an enemy of society, even while you have long been one of its most solid citizens. The attack on gay relationships continues.

An open letter to the Citizens of Atwood.

I sincerely apologize that I cannot represent Atwood anymore. I am completely disappointed and heartbroken (for lack of a better word) at the actions of my hometown, a community that always says how much it cares for others.

You know when I first created AtwoodKansas.com I did so because of my desire to do everything I could to save my hometown from dying like so many other Midwestern towns.

Even though when I grew up there, I was not treated very well, I still had a love for my hometown that only grew stronger as I grew up. Living in a metro area with 7 million people really makes you understand what the word "home" means.

I hear a lot of stereotypical things said about Kansas when people find out where I am from, and every time I stick up for my "home" because I knew that the people making those remarks didn't really know anything about Kansas. They had no idea that Kansas is not “so flat that when your dog runs away you can see him for 3 days”, they certainly did not know what it is like to experience sweet smell of alfalfa in the summer or what it’s like to run into the middle of a dust before it disappears. The majority think of Kansans as Redneck farmers who are racist, bigoted, un-educated, and "slow". I would tell them otherwise.

However, the Citizens of Atwood certainly lived up to a few of those stereotypes this past week! Way to go!

I've never kept it a secret that I'm gay, so it makes me wonder if Atwood would have accepted my gift that made Atwood the 8th city in Kansas to have a world class website and the 5th newspaper in the state to have a website, knowing that the person who made it was gay? Or would they just let the town wither and die to make spite themselves and feel holy?

I did not have a choice to be gay. How do I know it was not a choice for me? Simple, because I knew by the time I was 5. So unless a 5 year old knows that he wants to be ostracized, singled out, hated, threatened, and condemned just for being different, there is no way it is a choice. Those of you who went to school with me throughout Elementary and Junior High knew also because you would call me “fag” or “gay wad” and a few of you would even beat me up regularly.

So either my brain was so advanced that at 5 years old, that I subconsciously made a choice to become gay or it was hardwired into my brain at birth. Now by the time I finished High School, even though I knew I was gay, I tried to hide it and I had a lot of girl friends. But in my heart I knew, it did not feel right.

Now since I know I'm now going to be the topic of many Gossip-mongers in Atwood, I'll respond to a few things before more rumors get spread. Lets address the stereotype you have probably have of me because I’m Gay.

* I do not have Aids, nor any other sexually transmitted disease of any kind.
* I do not molest children. In fact, more child molestations have been committed by Catholic Priests and Heterosexual men than by homosexuals.
* Most of you probably think because I'm gay I’m a "nelly" queen, or a sissy. In fact, most gay men are NOT Nelly in the least bit, some are, but I've heard A LOT of straight men in Kansas with voices so high they could sing soprano in the Church choir.
* I don’t wear women’s clothing, talk like woman, nor do I act like a woman.
* Contrary to popular belief I, like a lot of Gays do indeed play sports like football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis and lacrosse, very well I might add.
* I do not sleep with every guy I meet. I’ve have a partner of 13 years. (how many people my age in Kansas can say that they've been with the same person for 13 years?) Sure they are some that do, but the same can be said for Heterosexuals. Some people in Atwood could have their own page in the phone book.
* Gays, do NOT lust after every Heterosexual man. This is a common misconception by Straight men who think that ALL Gay guys wants them. NOT TRUE!

For those of you who think it is a choice, that would mean at one time you had considered becoming a homosexual. It would be nice to hear your story.

I know that Atwood Voters made their decision based on the information put in front of them by the sponsors and backers of the Amendment rather than research on their own. They took the word of people who dedicate 100% of time and resources to oppression of Gay people. Did you know that Sponsors & Backers of this Amendment spent more money on this campaign than the entire budget of ALL the school districts that make up the NWKL. Imagine if they put that money to good use and gave it to education in the first place, we might not be in this mess today.

All of this is for what? To “Protect the Sanctity of Marriage”? Please explain how a gay person has affected your marriage, your ability to get married or your family? What can 2 gay people in love do to the Sanctity of Marriage that hasn’t already been done by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, the city of Las Vegas or shows like “Who Wants to marry a Millionaire", "the Bachelor", "the Bachelorette", "Will you marry my Daddy", or even the people of Rawlins County who have been married, gotten divorced, remarried, divorced and yet again remarried? The Sanctity of Marriage means that you marry someone, spend the rest of your life in a committed Union of two. It has nothing to do with sex or sexual orientation, it’s a lifelong commitment. Why should you care if 2 people next door or 50 miles away want to spend the rest of their lives together and get the same benefits you enjoy, it's not going to affect you in the least bit, unless you spy on them. If you don't like what's on Television, you change the channel, you don't get the Government to ban the show.

Examples of what this Amendment causes:

Example 1:

* A guy and girl meet at a party. They decide to get married 1 day later. The guy is in an car accident on the way to work the next morning and is in a coma at the hospital. The girl he has known for 48 hours has the legal right to make decisions for his care. She decides to pull the plug. He dies. Everything he owns becomes property of the girl he knew for 2 days.

Example 2:

* Two guys have been in a committed relationship for 75 years. Their home, the cars, everything is listed in both of their names. Their bank accounts are joint accounts, everything is shared. One of the guys gets sick and goes into a coma in the hospital. The other guy cannot visit him in the hospital because he is not family. The hospital contact family that has not spoken to the guy in the coma for 20 years because he is gay. They decide to pull the plug. The Government says the Estate must be sold, the cars must be sold, the bank accounts liquidated, everything that had the guys name on it becomes part of the Estate and is taxed at 60%! Of which, the family that has not spoken to him for 20 years will get ½, leaving the partner of 75 years with very little of the estate that they built and paid for together for 75 years. The remaining partner now becomes a burden to tax payers who will have to pay for his medical expenses, his housing subsidies, etc.

Example 3:

* A married couple (male & female) file jointly on their income tax. They paid $10,000.00 in income tax, but they rent so they didn’t pay property tax. Based on their combined income of $75,000 and the fact that they file jointly, they receive a refund of $4000.00
* A gay couple cannot file jointly, so each files individually. Guy 1 makes $75,000. and pays 10,000 in taxes. Guy 2 makes 75,000. and pays 10,000 in taxes. They own their home and pay an additional $8000.00 in property tax and $24000.00 in interest on the mortgage. Since the property tax and mortgage interest can only be claimed by 1 person we’ll give it to guy #2. Guy #1, files as a single and has to pay an additional $3000.00 in taxes because the deduction for a single person is less. Guy #2 made $75,000. and paid $8000.00 in property tax and $24000.00 in mortgage interest. Guy number 2 gets a $1900.00 refund.

If gays are taxed the same, we should be entitled to the same representation & benefits. Gays pay property taxes for your children to go to school, they pay the same taxes as you, yet they end up paying more in taxes than you do. So perhaps the tax laws should be changed since clearly there is taxation w/out representation. What's next? We have to sit in the back of the Bus, or drink from separate water fountains.

The people who sponsored this Amendment made most of their argument based on 1 passage in Leviticus that says, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is an abomination”. Now I agree, that Leviticus does indeed say this. However if we hold this one passage in the bible as truth, we must hold everything in the bible as truth, so in reality the new Amendment passed by Kansans, as defined by the bible should read like this:

* Marriage in the Kansas shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women.
o Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives.
o A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed by public stoning.
o Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden.
o Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce.
o If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.

This is supported by passages from:
DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21
If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning.
• DEUTERONOMY 22:22
If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death.
• MARK 10:1-12
Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.
• LEVITICUS 18:19
The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman’s period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.
• MARK 12:18-27
If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.
• DEUTERONOMY 25:11-12
If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her.

It is easy to see based on the information provided by the backers of this Amendment where some would get the belief that it is wrong to be gay. However, the backers neglected to mention that Leviticus also prohibits: Round haircuts, tattoos, working on the Sabbath, wearing garments of mixed fabrics, eating pork or shellfish, getting your fortune told, and even playing with the skin of a pig. (There goes football!)

Jesus himself, NEVER mentions homosexuality in the bible? In fact there are several places in the bible that appear to condone it.

The Bible describes three close relationships between two people of the same gender. They appear to have progressed well beyond a casual friendship. The individuals are:

* Ruth and Naomi
o Ruth 1:16-17 and 2:10-11 describe their close friendship Perhaps the best known passage from this book is Ruth 1:16-17:
"Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (NIV)
* David and Jonathan
o 1 Samuel 18:1
"...Jonathan became one in spirit with David and he loved him as himself." (NIV)
"...the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (KJV)
o 1 Samuel 18:2
"From that day, Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house." (NIV)
o 1 Samuel 18:3-4
"And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt." (NIV) - now you all know they didn’t wear any underwear in those days right?
o 1 Samuel 18:20-21
o "Thou shalt this day be my son-in-law, in the one of the twain." (KJV)
o 1 Samuel 20:41
"After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with is face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together - but David wept the most."
o 2 Samuel 1:26
"I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women."
* Daniel and Ashpenaz
o Daniel 1:9
"Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs" (KJV)

Those who sponsored Kansas Marriage Amendment are telling you only half the story. The Amendment, as passed by the Kansas Senate, could deny all unmarried couples, regardless of sexual orientation, the right to enter into private agreements that might "resemble" marriage. The implications of this are far-reaching and are just being felt in other states with similar Amendments. You could be in danger of losing your medical power of attorney, access to protection from abuse orders, special child care arrangements, hospital visitation, employee health insurance benefits, and more.

What it Says

* A. The marriage contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract. Marriage shall be constituted by one man and one woman only. All other marriages are declared to be contrary to the public policy of this state and are void.
* B. No relationship, other than a marriage, shall be recognized by the state as entitling the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage.

How will the Amendment change Kansas?

* Paragraph A will have no effect on Kansas. Kansas law already defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Same-sex marriage has been illegal in Kansas since 1867. The laws defining marriage have held up to a great deal of legal scrutiny and are in no danger of being overturned.
* The hidden agenda of Paragraph B
Paragraph B is an unprecedented attack on the rights of Kansans. It takes away your right to enter into any private relationship that doesn't meet the extremists' definition of marriage. Independent legal scholars have said that Paragraph B will leave Kansas courts unable to enforce any agreements between partners, including heterosexuals, who are unmarried. This ban on all relationships other than marriage is a dangerous attack on the basic rights of all Kansans, gay or straight.
* The Unintended Consequences
In other states, language used in similar Amendments has been used to restrict legal contracts associated with relationships. Although these Amendments were sold to the public as bans on gay marriage, they've been used to challenge legal relationships between all unmarried couples.

o In Utah, language in that state's marriage Amendment is being used to deny "Protection from Abuse" orders to unmarried heterosexual victims of domestic violence ('Attorney Cites Amendment 3 in Fighting Protection Order', Associated Press, Nov. 15, 2004).
o In Michigan, the State has cancelled provisions of a previously negotiated contract with the SEIU which provided health care benefits to partners of state workers (Press Release, Human Rights Campaign, Dec. 2, 2004).
o In Ohio, unmarried heterosexual couples are having problems exercising medical powers of attorney. The Ohio Amendment has been interpreted to bar any unrelated person from having medical power of attorney for another ('Marriage Amendment's Impact Felt Around Ohio', Connie Cartmell, Marietta Times, OH, Dec. 18, 2004).

In short, your taxpayer dollars will be used for judges to make decisions regarding the effects of the new Amendment. This Amendment was proposed by the Right Wing Fundamentalists for one reason: as a litmus test to single out Kansans that they can't bend to their every whim. They have chosen a minority scapegoat to blame for all the problems they believe they see in today's society. The backers of this Amendment will not rest until everyone who disagrees with them is silent; not until "the minority voice has been silenced by the majority," according to Jerry Johnston, one of this Amendment's prominent backers.

Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the ramifications and cost of this vote for the city of Atwood are:

* $150,000 current value of a donation that was to made from my estate to the 2nd Century fund at the time of my death, which at the time of fruition could have been well over $500,000.
* Loss of your world class website right before your national debut on News Channels around the country.
* The worst one of all, your reputation as a place where people care.

Going forward I sincerely hope that the Citizens of Atwood will research issues they know nothing about and realize that if they just think about things they won’t have to rely on those who are trying to oppress others solely for the reason that they are different. For the first time, Kansas now has a Constitution that denies certain rights to a certain group of people, which to me sounds like a giant step backwards reminiscent of racism.

I am sad to say that I will no longer consider Atwood my home. The next time someone makes a joke about Kansans being Rednecks, Hypocrites, etc. I will not defend it. Instead I’ll say, “you’re right”.

On that note, I’ll bid you farewell and wish you the best of luck in trying to keep your little town alive and leave with you some quotes from 60+ emails (of which only 7 were negative) I have received in response to the deletion of the Atwood website. Hopefully now you'll know what those who either lived in, been to, or have ties to Atwood really think about it, I found them very eye opening!, I think you will too.

Here are couple of quotes:

* “I actually have always referred to the mindset in Atwood as "crazy redneck farmer bigotry"
* “I remember Atwood as the most diabolically hypocritical and cruel place I have ever known.’
* “I enjoyed my childhood in NW Kansas but all of my bad memories come from that town exactly because of the issues you bring up.”
* “Fortunately, not all small towns are like Atwood... I’ve been there! Good luck, and keep up the well deserved skewering!”
* "My family lived in Atwood for 6 years in the late 80's and early 90's and now we live in (town deleted by the webmaster) and everyone here thinks of Atwood as Ratwood. I remember going into Curriers and hearing people talk about my Mother's pregnancy saying it was going to be "a nigger baby", even though they did not know who the father of my Mothers new baby was. I hate that town"
* "Forgive them lord, for they know not what they do."

The last line says it all doesn't it. Now since you have Judged, the 900+ of you will need to start thinking of your answers to say to God when he asks you why you did that. Some of you a lot sooner than others.

Let me leave you with this. When you go to Church, ask for the answers. And ask "Dear lord, please forgive me for I am about to leave this service and stand directly outside of the doors to your house for the next half hour and Gossip, bear false witness against my neighbors and Judge those who I don't like, and those who are different than I am".

Peace, Love and Happiness,

Daniel

Posted at 9:27 PM

April 10, 2005

I'd be much better off if I could figure out how to still read these damn books through my eyelids. Obviously I'm not proficient at that yet, and since I keep falling asleep constantly as I'm trying to read, my only recourse, I think, is to work at this new method. Either that or I have to figure out how to speed-read at 100 pages a minute, getting a lot read in the few minutes before I nod off. Or maybe my best hope is to take the red pill, ala the Matrix, and then access the appropriate learning programs to just have it uploaded to me.

One would think that the more practical thing to do would be to get more sleep, but after a solid seven hours each of the past two nights I'm still finding myself constantly nodding off. Sure, I'd probably be better with nine or more hours of sleep each night, but that hasn't been happening. The "quality" of the texts may be part of the problem, of course. I mean, I find the history of World War II very interesting, but a lot of the textbook and this supporting text we're reading are boring and drawn-out as hell. Not that I'm trying to make excuses - I'm actually pissed off at myself for having this much trouble lately. It's bad enough even when I'm not suffering this trouble staying awake. I read fairly slowly, and that's just a fact of life that I've come to live with. But the situation is completely unacceptable now.

I'm having trouble getting everything read that I need to read to keep up right now, and I certainly am finding it impossible to catch up with some projects that I'm behind on. It is i infuriating to actually have the extra time I would normally be spending with caring for my grandmother and still find myself without the ability to get caught up with things like I should. I'll keep struggling along and do what I can - just like I always do - but I doubt my frustration levels will be dropping any time soon.

Posted at 11:28 PM

April 9, 2005

Congratulations to today's top news stories that tie at winning the award for the blatantly obvious:

Surprise! Pretty people earn more

Iraqi protesters: 'No, no to America'

Practicing safe blogging:
Personal Web blogs are hugely popular. They're also landing some people in a heap of trouble.

Gasoline keeps on rising:
Prices reach still another record

The titles really say it all, but the text of the articles follows:

Surprise! Pretty people earn more
Fed Reserve study shows beautiful people make about 5% more than their average counterparts.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Kiss that merit raise goodbye.

Good-looking, slim, tall people tend to make more money than their plain-Jane counterparts, according to a study released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, with researchers finding that beautiful people tend to earn 5 percent more an hour than their less comely colleagues.

After variables like education and experience are factored out, Fed researchers said the "beauty premium" exists across all occupations, and that jobs requiring more interpersonal contact have higher percentages of above-average-looking employees.

For example, the study found there was a higher beauty premium among private sector lawyers than their government-supported counterparts since private attorneys need to attract and keep clients.

If that weren't enough, the Fed also discovered a "plainness penalty," punishing below-average-looks with earnings of 9 percent less an hour.

"Certain characteristics, such as appearance, might affect productivity in ways that are not as easily measured (or as obvious) as are other characteristics, like education or experience," said the report, adding that the effects looks have on self-confidence, communication and social skills were unknown.

Another possible explanation for the wage disparity: good, old-fashioned discrimination, said the Fed.

For example, the wage differential discovered for obesity seems to be limited to white women, the study said, belying an unmeasured productivity explanation.

Economists also found that women considered obese in terms of their body mass index (BMI) in both 1981 and 1988 earned 17 percent less than women within their recommended BMI range.

And while weight seemed to dog women, short men get the short end of the stick. Economists found a "height premium" among white men, with a 1.8-percent increase in wages for every additional inch of height over the national median.

 

Iraqi protesters: 'No, no to America'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Several thousand protesters gathered Saturday in Baghdad to urge the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as well as to call for national unity and denounce terrorism.

The marchers condemned President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, and some protesters gave the trio the pun name of "triangle of death" -- the same as the nickname for a volatile region south of the capital.

The protest and other demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam's regime and the famous toppling of the former ruler's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square.

The protesters were largely supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army battled U.S. and Iraqi troops last year in Baghdad's Sadr City and Najaf, 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of the capital.

Some protesters chanted, "No, no to America," and carried effigies of Bush, Blair and Saddam.

On Friday night, a member of al-Sadr's group was shot dead outside Baghdad on his way to the protest in the city, a member of the National Assembly said.

Sheikh Fadhil Abdul-Zahra al-Shawki was traveling with companions from Karbala when they were ambushed.
Peaceful protests

The demonstration stayed peaceful, and security around the square was largely Iraqi, with U.S. troops keeping a low profile.

In cites of the "Sunni Triangle" west of Baghdad, protesters also demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Sunni Arabs, who dominated in Saddam's government, don't have the clout they once had.

Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraq's 26 million people, and Kurds hold sway in the new transitional National Assembly, elected in January.

U.S. officials have said repeatedly they will not set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

"Our troops will come home when Iraqis are capable of defending themselves," President Bush said at a news conference last month.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said there could be a temporary increase in U.S. forces at the end of the year, when elections are slated to be held again, but the numbers won't reach the high mark of 152,000.

On March 20, Rumsfeld said that U.S. troop levels would be drawn down to 135,000 to 140,000 "over the coming weeks," similar to numbers before the January 30 election.

Several countries in the U.S.-led coalition have announced plans to withdraw their forces, including Ukraine, which began bringing service members home about a month ago.

Freelance videographer detained

A freelance video cameraman for CBS News has been arrested, U.S. military officials said Friday.

The cameraman was wounded Tuesday during a firefight between U.S. troops and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul.

U.S. military officials said that the man's camera held footage of roadside bomb attacks against U.S. troops and that they believe he was tipped off to those attacks.

A military statement said troops believe the man "poses an imperative threat to coalition forces" and that he "will be processed as any other security detainee."

CBS said the photographer was hired about three months ago, and it asked news organizations not to identify him.

The network said the man was referred by someone "who has had a trusted relationship with CBS News for two years."

"It is common practice in Iraq for Western news organizations to hire local cameramen in places considered too dangerous for Westerners to work effectively," the network said in a statement.

"The very nature of their work often puts them in the middle of very volatile situations."

One official said at least four videos in the man's camera show roadside bomb attacks on U.S. troops.

"The individual in question was carrying press credentials from CBS News," the military statement said. "Military officials detained this individual and are conducting an investigation into his previous activities as well as his alleged support of anti-Iraqi insurgency activities."

The U.S. military has said that the cameraman was shot by soldiers after it appeared he had a weapon.

The military said the shooting occurred after a suicide bombing and that the cameraman was standing next to an armed insurgent. U.S. troops have been fighting insurgents in Mosul almost daily.

Iraqi soldiers killed

Five Iraqi soldiers were shot to death Friday when gunmen stopped their car in the southern town of Latifiya, Iraqi police said.

Investigators suspected the driver, a civilian, of being involved in the ambush and took him into custody, police said.

The soldiers were not in uniform when they were stopped about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Baghdad, police said.

On Saturday, two Iraqi civilians were killed in the city when a car bomb apparently targeting a U.S. convoy exploded. The bomb missed the convoy but hit civilians in a central neighborhood of Mosul. Thirteen people -- three critically -- also were wounded.

 

Practicing safe blogging
Personal Web blogs are hugely popular. They're also landing some people in a heap of trouble.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Add blogging to the list of extracurricular activities in need of some protection.

As many as 40,000 personal Web diaries -- dubbed "blogs" -- crop up each day, reports Technorati, a San Francisco startup that tracks Web logs.

Overall, there are just over 8.5 million virtual diaries, up from 100,000 two years ago, as Average Joes, CEOs and political foes turn to blogs opine on everything from Pope John Paul II's death and "First Twin" Jenna Bush to the Red Sox and housing costs.

Blogs are shaking up the Internet but they're also raising a lot of alarms -- and, in some cases, landing their authors in hot water.

A Google employee lost his job after gabbing on a blog about internal goings-on at the Internet search engine giant. Last month, Apple Computer won a court order seeking the identities of bloggers who revealed on-line confidential information about a company product in development.

Families too have been known to find out on a blog more information than they ever wanted to know about a relative's uncensored sex life.

Clearly there's a need for a few rules of the "blogosphere" road.

On Thursday the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights group that wants to protect bloggers, released a guide to help virtual diarists avoid the wrath of Mom, the boss or just about anyone else.

"If you blog, there are no guarantees you'll attract a readership of thousands," states the manual. "But at least a few readers will find your blog, and they may be people you'd least want to expect....And there may be consequences."

Below, a few tips from "How to Blog Safely (About Work and Anything Else)":

* A is for Anonymous First, the "no duh" warning: don't post any pictures, reveal your name or even confess you work for, say, an unnamed weekly newspaper in Seattle. "(I)t's clear that you work in one of two places," cautions the guide. Posting using a pseudonym is smart but, if you think using "Leanne" when your name is Annalee is a good idea, think again.

* Technology as Alibi Superficial disguises go only so far when every wannabe pundit also has a unique -- and, unfortunately, traceable -- Internet address. The good news is, there are services like Invisiblog.com, Anonymizer.com and Tor that specialize in helping you keep your address and your identity under wraps.

* Be Exclusive You don't have to let the whole world watch. You can set up a blog that is password-protected. Blogging services such as LiveJournal let you decide who gets to see all or parts of your blog. Turns out, you can also block Google and other major search engines from listing your blog in Internet search results. To do so, you need to create a special file called a "Robots Text File."

* Have a Blog and Keep Your Job Mark Jen, the fired Google worker, isn't the only blogger to land on the unemployment lines. Delta Air Lines, Microsoft and Friendster, the on-line social networking service, have all allegedly canned hired help for blogging. Countless other employers are taking steps to prevent loose-lipped workers from disclosing company information on the Internet.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the First Amendment protects against censorship by the government, not employers or any other private party. In most states, employment is considered "at will," which means that employees can quit and employers can fire anytime and for any reason.

And no states have laws to protect bloggers from job or any other discrimination, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

There is some good news, but not much. Most states specifically protect workers' political activities and opinions. Using a blog as a unionizing tool is also protected.

Workers who blow the whistle on illegal activities by their employers also enjoy certain safeguards, but should "notify somebody in authority about the sludge (their) company is dumping in the wetlands first, then blog about it," the guide states.

And, of course, government workers are free to carp all they want online as long as they don't reveal classified or confidential information.

* The Safest Way of All This isn't in the how-to blog guide, but remember the old days of paper and pen diaries? True, the audience is limited to the authors themselves and maybe a snooping sibling or two. Ones with a lock and key work best.

 

Gasoline keeps on rising
Prices reach still another record; average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded increases to $2.265.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Gasoline prices continued to climb Friday as the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded rose to $2.265, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motorist organization.

On average, prices are highest in California at $2.591 for a gallon of regular unleaded; they're lowest in New Jersey at $2.064.

The previous high, reached before the latest run-up, was $2.054, notched May 26, 2004, according to AAA.

Diesel also hit a record high Friday at $2.380 a gallon.

According to a weekly survey of service stations by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the national pump price for regular unleaded gasoline jumped 6.4 cents during the past week and is up 44 cents from a year ago.

The EIA said gasoline demand this summer is forecast to increase 1.8 percent from last summer, and prices are expected to keep rising through the Memorial Day holiday in late May, the beginning of the busy U.S. summer driving season.

American drivers will consume an average of 9.331 million barrels per day (bpd) of gasoline this summer, according to the EIA.

Although the price of crude oil continued to slip further from Monday's record peaks, long-term price supports for crude remain intact -- including strong demand from the United States, rising demand from China and lower non-OPEC production. According to analysts, 40 percent of each barrel of crude goes toward gasoline production.

The secret to surviving record-high gas prices?

Posted at 1:54 AM

April 8, 2005

Posted at 10;10 PM

April 7, 2005

I think the cold is gone. That hasn't meant a lot considering how exhausted and achy I am constantly. In fact the whole day was an absolute struggle to stay awake: during class, during my morning shower, during my drives to and from school. Sure, you can laugh and think I'm joking, but I'm not. I was literally falling asleep at the wheel and everywhere else. By the time I got back to the house I was practically delirious. I sorted out mail and washed my face with cold water to wake me up before sitting down to read a little bit for on of my assignments, and I was completely unconscious before I realized it. I didn't wake up until four hours later, and I still ache and I still feel tired, but at least I'm not having to focus every iota of my being into staying awake. It's a huge improvement in my mind, but clearly I have to get some real, prolonged sleep if I'm ever going to be back to normal (or at least as close to normal as I ever am).

Posted at 12:05 AM

April 6, 2005

I think the cold's breaking. Now if I could just sleep again.

Posted at 9: 55 PM

April 5, 2005

Happy Unbirthday to me!

I had the best Unbirthday gift today! Chris called me from New Zealand on his birthday and we talked for over three and a half hours. It was great to hear his voice, and he sounds so happy and relaxed, just the way he should be. He's working steadily on his second children's book, and he has the complete concept fully worked out, just needing detailed work on the drawing. He's also painting ... the house next door. Unfortunately before he can paint, he has to scrape the old paint from the house, something he's not enjoying at all.

It's been a few months since we've talked, and while we've been sending e.mails and snail mails back and forth, we haven't had detailed discussions about some things for a while. One subject, of course, was George Bush and the Republican nightmare here in the United States. We talked about different Congressional policies and the budget and recent big news items, sharing views.

We also talked about our circle of friends. I was touched but saddened to learn that I'm Chris' "best pen pal", as he called me. I was sure that Eric and Sarah and others were in touch with CHris quite regularly, but that is clearly not the case. It saddens me because I've felt like I barely keep in touch myself, sending some sort of e.mail or something ever month or so, and I've felt that that is far too little as it is. Apparently, though, I'm keeping better contact than anybody else, though, I don't suppose I should be too surprised considering I've seen before, with myself and others, how quickly friends lose touch when someone move away a significant distance. Still, Chris has so many friends that I'm amazed he hasn't had more people regularly in touch. At least his old buddies from the glass-blowing program at Bowling Green are still in touch. Somebody's got the right idea.

Despite what seems limited contact from his old circle of friends, Chris seems incredibly happy, and I'm very sure that his new fiance Alice and her son James are the biggest part of that happiness. Chris clearly loves them both and also respects them; he respects Alice as a very talented artists and glassblower and he respects James as a very intelligent young boy. I don't know if Chris could be any more impressed with them or proud of them if he had been married to Alice for years and had been James' blood father - he has such a bond to them that you would think they had a much longer and closer shared history than they do. He's very lucky to have found them, and I can't think of anybody more deserving.

Chris and Alice and James will have a new adventure facing them in July. Chris' visitor's visa to New Zealand will expire, and it looks like he'll be unable to extend it, so all three of them are going to Korea. Chris will be teaching English and trying to make more artwork. It sounds like he has a pretty clear idea of what to expect, and he has things all laid out, but I still sense that some of his attitude is a brave front and that he'd much rather stay in New Zealand, where he knows what to expect. I'm sure he'll do just fine wherever he is, particularly with Alice and James alongside him for support, and a little trepidation about the unknown is perfectly natural. Chris wouldn't be human if he weren't a little concerned about such a big change in his life. It'll be interesting to see what does indeed happen.

BY the end of three and a half hours we had talked about all sorts of things, and we would surely have kept going longer and talked about even more, but both of our phones were beeping like crazy, telling us that our phones were running out of battery power and needed to be recharged. We made an incredibly long goodbye, pushing the limits of the batteries, and even when we finally were done and had hung up, I came away feeling great from having heard from him (my cold was beating me down by then, but that's another matter). It was great to hear from him, and I finally got his phone number, so now I can call him as well. I'll be looking forward to it.

Posted at 5:37 AM

April 4, 2005

Blah. I hate colds. So frustrating.

To add to the fun, I've been having trouble sleeping again. I guess that's ironic in a way; now that I really need to sleep to let my body fight off the cold, this of all times is when I wake up constantly through the night and have trouble falling back asleep, regardless of how much I want myself to. Who knows, I might even have caught this from Solace, seeing as he often has insomnia problems, however that doesn't seem all too likely.

This is certainly most unwelcome during this last, very full month of assignments for the semester. But why am I at all surprised. Getting a cold is really par for the course.

Posted at 9:09 PM

April 3, 2005

Remember how I mentioned that my niece had a cold while she was here and how it was making he3r alternately cranky and sleepy? Well she left and I was pleased to see that my grandma hadn't caught the bug before she left for Florida. After all, it had been a busy, tiring previous week for her, and she didn't get much sleep the last day before heading off to the airport.

It's somewhat ironic that with all of my concern for my grandma that I should be the one to get the cold. Strange, really, since I don't get colds often - maybe once every few years - but I stupidly set myself quip for getting the cold, I suspect, and now I'm stuck with it.

I was pretty tired on Thursday, not having gotten a lot of sleep and having had a not-so-great day at school, but I had a lot I wanted to get done, so I pushed myself once I got back to the house and kept busy 'til late. One of the big things I was doing was washing load after load of laundry, largely bedding and towels used during the visit from my sister and the kids, and I didn't even think anything about how impregnated those things would be with Christa's cold. So I, tired, worked with those things for hours, and when, after Midnight when I was typing my Journal entry, I thought nothing of it that my nose was running like a sieve, just that maybe I was reacting to having turned down the thermostat in the house after my grandma left.

Even the following morning I didn't think anything of it when my mouth was a bit dry, I had a headache, and my neck ached a bit. Outside of the dry mouth, that wasn't at all unusual for the way things have been for the last few months. Even the dry mouth wasn't too strange, all things considered, so I made nothing of it. By the afternoon, though, as my mouth stayed a bit dry and my achiness was more apparent throughout my whole body, and as my nose ran and I sneezed, it hit home that I had picked up my niece's damn cold.

And I still have it. I've been fighting it with lots of fluids, juice, good meals, and Cold-Eeze lozenges. More sleep would be good, but that just hasn't worked out for the last couple of days (although I'm hoping for nine hours straight tonight), but I haven't felt very tired regardless.

Christa was deep into her cold after six days, and I suspect that I will have this damn thing for a while yet. Damnit anyhow. The cold is more annoying than anything else (as is usually the case when I have a cold), but I'm very short on patience for it. Here I finally have a chance to catch up on schoolwork without any outside commitments beyond that, and I have to get a cold and be forced to deal with that. Joy.

Posted at 12:16 AM

April 2, 2005

What's this craziness I'm talking, claiming to have a social life? Well it's true. It's not a fabulous and extensive social life, but it's a social life nonetheless. In fact considering I've had pretty much no social life this past semester, it doesn't take a whole lot to make my day.

Last night and the late morning and early afternoon of today were a real treat, in fact, because I had a great visit with a regular reader of this Journal from West Virginia, Solace. We've been e.mailing each other back and forth for some time now, and he happened to be taking a vacation that took him close to my area, so he suggested maybe we could meet and things were set up quickly from there.

I was excited to meet Solace because we have communicated so well via e.mail and seem to have a lot of similar views about things, but I was also somewhat cautious and hesitant about our meeting because the last person I met in a similar situation after wonderful exchanges of e,mails (Drake, the author of Drake Tales), ended up having a great time visiting with me (or so I was led to believe), and yet he veritably disappeared afterward, not replying to my e.mails or my phone calls for a year. That whole situation bothered me, too, because while I accepted that Drake had become extremely extra busy at work and didn't have time to chat, I had a hard time believing that such a crunch at work would continue unabated for a full year. But I lived through the whole situation, and while I was very disappointed and even a bit hurt, I moved on and learned to live without Drake, even though I missed those great conversations. So I was worried about meeting Solace, having some trepidation about a Drake-like experience, but my initial observations are that my concerns were probably unfounded.

After Solace found his way to Sandusky, I directed him to Max and Erma's so that we could get some dinner. He was more than generous, buying my meal, even against my protests, and we talked for hours: while we were waiting to be seated, while we waited to get our food, while we ate, after we ate, and while walking around the parking lot as it was getting colder and windier. Eventually, when we were outside, we got cold enough to decide we couldn't just keep standing in the cold, yet I had no good ideas of where to go since almost nothing other than bars was still open at that point. So I made the decision to go to Meijer's to walk around and talk more as we wandered the aisles. It was a poor choice, really, but the only other options (besides a bar) were Wal-mart or Home Depot. I though I made the best of the available choices.

We talked about his job and my school and our families and life in general, as well as a bit of politics and such. There was certainly no end of things to discuss, and while I'll admit that there were awkward pauses and silences throughout the evening, I don't think that that's too surprising considering this was the first time we'd actually met and interacted in person. Shortly after Midnight I had grown sick of wandering the aisles in Meijer - we'd seen everything at least once by then - and we wandered out into the rain and decided to call it a night.

This morning I called Solace at his hotel room and we arranged to meet at the mall to talk some more and have lun ch before he had to head back to West Virginia. In retrospect the aimless wandering around Meijer may have been more interesting than wandering around the Sandusky Mall (which is more a statement about the mall than anything else), but we still had some more interesting conversation for a couple of hours. Around Noon we headed to lunch at Mario di Napoli's Italian Ristorante. Neither of us had ever been there, but I knew that it had a great reputation for excellent food, and we were certainly not disappointed. The food was yummy (I had a Chicken Stromboli and some garlic cheese bread while Solace had Fettuccine Alfredo with grilled chicken), and I also had the best homemade lemonade that I've tasted in years. We ate and talked for still another hour and more, but we decided that Solace had a long way to drive ahead of him, and it would be best for him to get on his way and not arrive too terribly late.

So without much ado, we said our goodbyes and he was gone, but I'd had a great time meeting him and getting to know him better than I had. Hopefully he'll have come away with a similar impression, but that's left to be seen. Still, I don't expect to have him disappear from me entirely like Drake, but exactly where our friendship will go from here is anybody's guess. I'd like to see us keep in regular contact and continue to build a solid friendship, but only time will see how that comes to pass. All I know for now is that I had a great break from my year-long general lack of social interaction. It made my day, really.

Posted at 12:21 AM

April 1, 2005

Paul gets a social life (sort of)! News at 11!

[and this isn't even an April Fool's joke ...]

Posted at 1:32 AM

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