Friday, April 15, 2005

One is a Genius, The Other's Insane

kitties
Maddy (left) and Seamus confer in their daily plans to take over the world,
but are distracted over a rolling argument about who gets to play with the
catnip bodypillow. The afternoon's plans collapse when a beam of sunlight
comes in, causing them to both go into a deep slumber. The world is spared.

Today's Word: Rhyme

A sing-song melody in the wind gave the travelers pause. With the wind came a cadence unknown to their ears, a harmony that cut around metal and plastic, making nature bounce in a pattern that was a poetry. The guests wept with joy.
*Sound of kicking things around in utter rage*

Yesterday, the state of Oregon nullified hundreds of same-sex marriages, wiping out the dreams of Pacific Northwest gay couples who rushed into the state to finally, completely, absolutely be equal with straight couples who get married because they love each other more than heaven and earth.

I don't get it. I don't understand. Someone, please help me figure this out. You can have a government lie, cheat, and steal its way into power, into a pointless war, into bankrupting the nation for pro-rich people tax cuts, rape the environment, threaten judges, and just act like a bully off his meds. However, we can't have two people of the same gender get married because what...that's not natural? That's not what some invisible sky being wants? Blood for oil, a-ok. Gay folk exchanging vows and being recognized as a couple, nope.

I'm equal parts baffled and angry. Although I'm straight and happily married to a wonderful woman, I have a lot of lesbian friends and co-workers. One co-worker in fact was part of the civil union gold rush last year, heading to Oregon with her partner to get married. They had a ceremony some time back in Vermont, but the wedding in Oregon, where you would be "married"? How could they not pass this up?

So, they took themselves and their children (they have twin boys together, raising them with love and care as any other Tab A/Slot B couple would) to Oregon, had the ceremony, and were a married couple. Now, it's all invalidated, due to the bigotry of old thinking, that love, true and genuine love, can only be in the heterosexual flavor.

It may not sound like a big deal, but the government can screw with people who are together but not legally seen as married. You aren't recognized as a member of the family in some cases, removed from life-or-death decisions in some cases.

But it's more than that. It's being told by a group of thinly veiled theocrats who you can love, and who is a lesser being in society. That's not how equality and democracy is supposed to work. It's the shameful replay of the bigotry of against interfaith marriage and, later, interracial marriage. It's the soul-wearying dread of "Oh shit, we have to go through this all over again," chanting over and over about human rights to the bigots with power until they finally get it through their pinheads that love is an immutable element. It doesn't belong to one race or gender or sexuality. Just get the fuck over yourselves, and let's have our long-promised future where we can love who we want without baggage and bullshit.

And flying cars, too, damnit.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Today's Word: Sacred

The trees, the sky, the water, the children, the curve of her body, the revelation of a good idea, fresh vegetables, sunshine in the morning, the first scoop of ice cream, the lover's gasp on orgasm, a new book.

Paper goods

Chateau Ryan has been burning through a lot of money as of late, with various expenses and such. Battle lines of finance erased and re-drawn as we write checks and withdraw from savings. We've been bleeding the savings for too long now, a lasting legacy of winter and the holidays and various automobile ailments. This weekend, however, it changes. I'm excited in a purely sober/grown-up way to put money in savings. There's a weird little joy-kick I get when I take care of the bills and I see a heap of cash left over. Wifey and I have been starting a purging of unnecessary expenses, which is showing up on our credit card bill (note: only one credit card, which we pay off every month fully. We always marvel at the ads for debt consolidation, featuring testimonials from Cletus and Brandeen Q. Public who were up to $50,000 in debt. Hint: once you get to $10,000 in the hole, try stop digging. And stop getting more damn cards). I figure between the gym, internet access, donations, and other goodies, I rack up more than $100 in charges a month.

So, looking at the credit card bill last night, came up with a few expenses I could delete from the butcher's bill. Goodbye to Salon, IGN and Gamefly, which saves us about $44 a month, about $500 for the year. The budget-fu is part of my regular fit of paring down and getting rid of things I think I don't need. I'm happy to be minimal, with only books cluttering up most of the flat surfaces at home. Lonely beasts they are, half-read, spread-eagle flat on the cold plane of a bookshelf or night stand. They are half-devoured literary prey. But books, even in piles resembling Neolithic structures, never make me think of clutter. They make me think of more bookcases. And it comes back to the kinky joy I get of paying the bills. Everything is in order, everything is neat stacks. The vertical lines of books in rows. The line of bills, stamped and ready to go out into the world.

On edit

Good thing we're cutting back spending.

Tens of thousands of people who want to wipe out their debts in bankruptcy court would have to work out repayment plans instead under legislation Congress approved Thursday.


From what I've been reading, you don't want to get indentured to the credit card cartel.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Today's Word: Mix

He was a small swirl of fur, racing along the floor, dodging furniture and feet as he leaped over anything in his path to chase his kitty sister. He was a blend of speed and single-mindedness.

Ready Made

Hey! No starting the apocalypse until I get my novel finished, okay?

Countries around the world were destroying vials of a nearly 50-year-old killer flu virus Wednesday that were sent to thousands of labs as part of a routine test kit, raising fears of a global pandemic.

The World Health Organization said Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore had already destroyed their samples, while Japan was doing the same. Taiwan and Germany also announced that they had destroyed all their vials.

Nearly 5,000 labs in 18 countries or territories — mostly in the United States — received vials from a U.S. company that supplies kits used for internal quality control tests. News that the vials had been sent to the labs was first reported by The Associated Press.

The germ, the 1957 H2N2 "Asian flu" strain, killed between 1 million and 4 million people. It has not been included in flu vaccines since 1968, and anyone born after that date has little or no immunity to it.


There's something darkly comic about a plague that could have killed millions was probably located and stopped through something like a UPS tracking number. Great potential for an ad there.

Same Taste, New Wrapper

Having a plate of General Tso before class last night. In the far end of the dining hall was a large-screen TV airing programs out of Hong Kong. I couldn't read the Cantonese script, but I swear I watched previews for the Chinese "Alias," followed by the Chinese "The Office," and then the Chinese "Friends." The "Alias" was frenetic filmmaking, as if every other 10 frames were removed, making the action leap and jump in manic spurts, forcing the brain to connect the dots to follow along. It was silent-film lyrical in its jigsaw assemblage, rivaling only anime in structure, bright colors, and Asian girls in tiny skirts kicking the unholy crap out of businessmen in suits and sunglasses (the international sign of EVIL).

Monday, April 11, 2005

Today's Word: Bloom

The radiance of the light rose from the terminal top, casting a cone of beauty and wonder up toward the ceiling, A shift in color matching the ambient noise it the room, until it shaped itself into tulips.

12054

I turned 33 yesterday. A quiet day by all accounts. It was an exclusive party, held by the members of the inner sanctum of Chateau Ryan. Ate until I got sick, and I felt all 33 years at once. I'm now back on South Beach, eating my pre-portioned meals from tiny Lunchable-for-adult boxes and from little pouches you tear open to reveal the morsel inside. Modern food rationing by choice! Assemble your own foodstuffs! Lego Lunches! All the rage.
But it's for the best. I need to be on some kind of regiment. Writing, eating, exercising. I've been drifting as of late, eating poorly and getting wrapped up in pixels. I feel (lapsed Catholic metaphor incoming) as if I need to be picked up and twisted, having all the grease and salt and procrastination wrung out of me until I return to my feet 15 pounds lighter and ready to churn out a chapter in one sitting. Maybe it's the idea of getting older, sinking into the irreversible swamp of being an "adult," I need to do something with my life. I give a lot to other people through my work, with my lovely wife, and in my writing classes. But now, surrounded by the sentinels of my bookcases at home and work, I need to do something to be included in that pantheon. I need to be published. I need some sort of permanence. Some people opt to have children to be their legacy; I'm having the biological urge to push out a novel, textual or graphic.

And like with a great many things, I have that determined look on my face, and I intone that it's time to get serious. Not a kid anymore. Even if when I sit down to write, I get spooked by inner demons, but it's time to move past it. A lot of those demons took up residence more than 25 years ago. Long enough, I reckon.

Besides, came up with some neat little touches for the novel and graphic novel project, things that could pay out, if I can line up all the little fragments into a greater whole. Imagine that old Monty Python joke about having a million miles of string, but it's all cut into three-inch segments. The grueling bit is tying it all together. But getting older, looking back on all the misadventures and accidental insight, you gather some body of knowledge to tell you (along with your loving wife, who has said it a million times) that "Yes, you can do this. Go on. You were born to do this." Suddenly, a pen shows up in your hand, and you are two, three paragraphs in. The icy voices cruelly calling you to stop before you embarrass yourself grow fainter, a modulation out of tuning range. You keep on, and before you know it, you smile, and you can't for the life of you figure out why. But, really, you know why. You've caught some sunshine.

So, here's to 33. An awkward mix of having the energy of youth and the inklings of mature wisdom, seeing the playfield ahead and having the razz-ma-tazz to charge the grounds.