Bower of Bliss

Having Reason on Your Side

The American Psychological Association this week came out in support of gay marriage, saying that there is growing evidence acquired through their research that children are not pyschologically damaged by being raised by gay parents—which supports what anyone with half a brain already knows. Children want only two things: to feel loved and to feel safe. Everything else falls into place when you crerate that reality for a child. And the argument that gay parents will raise gay children is just ridiculous as the overwhelming majority of gay people in this world were raised by straight parents, so where is the logic in that?

Hopefully this will make big news.

A Real Tough Cookie

We went to see Pat Benatar the other night. Now, I was never a big Pat Benatar fan, but SweetieKins was insane for her. He has all her LPs, and before Napster went all legal, he had me downloading all her songs to burn to CD one Saturday while he laid in bed with the flu. But our friend Hot Lunch hooked us up with free tickets, and who doesn't love free? The show was actually really good. Pat looked and sounded as good as ever, we had great seats right in front of the sound board. There were a couple of things that bothered me though, one being the fact that she referred to her old songs as "vintage." I don't really use that word a lot, but I am pretty sure it means something other than 20 years old. It just made me feel, well creeped out, and I'm not sure exactly why it creeped me out.

But the thing that bothered me the most was the fact that she didn't look anything like she does on her marketing stuff. If you look at her Web site, you get this image of her as still being the "vintage" rocker chick, and while she definitely rocked out at least in spirit, she came out on stage looking like Mr. Miyagi. No wild makeup, no crazy outfits, none of that attitude that she seems to be exuding on her Web site. I wasn't expecting her to come out looking like this anymore, I mean the woman is a mom after all, but the pageboy haircut just doesn't scream "Hell is for Children" to me.

"We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001,was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared. How did this happen, and how can we avoid such tragedy again?"

The 9/11 Commission Report is released.

The American Vote

Roughly half of American citizens vote in presidential elections. It’s a startling statistic. It’s an embarrassing number, especially for a country that takes such great pride in its freedoms and rights, and it is time that this number increases dramatically. November is coming quickly, and soon the media will whip itself into a frenzy covering the 2004 presidential campaign. It’s nothing unusual; it happens every four years. You can almost set your clocks by it. As soon as the leaves start to change, the mud slinging becomes just a bit more aggressive. And when that happens, you have a choice to make: will you be a part of the political process, or will you remain disinterested? 
 
To me, it matters less whom you vote for than the fact that you actually go out and vote, though I really can't imagine how anyone with a brain would vote for Bush. But that fact is irrelevant to the greater issue, which is that too many Americans throw their votes—their voices—away instead of exercising their freedom to choose whom they want to represent them to the nation, to the world.    

Consider the 2000 presidential election, when it all came down to Florida. The number of electoral votes coming out of Florida determined who won the election. Not counting overseas ballots, Bush won the electoral votes of the state of Florida by a margin of 229 votes, which tipped the scales in his favor, ostensibly winning him the election. No matter whom you voted for, no matter whom you supported, it was a close race. Imagine if less than 250 people, people who otherwise didn’t vote, decided to go out and vote for Gore. Imagine if less than 250 of the people who voted for Bush decided to stay home that day and not vote. The results could have tipped the scales. 

Individual votes DO count. They count for sheer numbers, but they also count because by voting you are exercising your voice. You are making yourself heard 
 
Imagine if you were told that if you didn’t vote in the 2004 presidential election, you would surrender that right for the 2008 election. This would be unacceptable to most people. After all, voting is a right, not an obligation, and assuming you haven’t broken any laws that disenfranchise you from the voting process, exercising the right not to vote goes hand-in-hand with the right to cast your ballot in November. But if having that right is so important to you, so important that you want to keep that right even if you don’t exercise it, then why isn’t it important enough to put it into action? 
 
These are the people who are leading your country. The President appoints Supreme Court justices and cabinet members; influences public opinion; can polarize or unite a nation; declares war or negotiates peace. He (and hopefully one day, she) represents your country to the rest of the world. When the world likes or doesn’t like what the president does, it’s the country—it’s you—that is honored or blamed. And if that is reality, why aren’t you ensuring that the person with this responsibility is the person that you want to be in that position? 

The right to vote is not a universal. There are countries where only certain members of society are given that right. There are countries where no one is given that right. Voting is so important to the idea of democracy that initially only land-owning white men in America where given that right. Do you know when the voting franchise was finally extended to include women? To include African-Americans? You might be surprised to find out. And when you do find out, ask yourself why this right has been guarded so closely for so long and has been held in such high esteem that those with the right wanted so desperately to keep it out of the reaches of others.  It's like the marriage debate in our national dialogue now. Of course marriage is important and valuable. The fact that there are people trying so hard to keep it away from people who want it so much is all you need to consider. 
 
Of course, voting is power, and your individual vote is a powerful tool. Don’t underestimate it. There is no greater service to the democratic process than exercising your right to vote. This year I am telling anyone who will listen why it is important to be a part of the vote. This year I am determined to change the minds of a few serial non-voters and give them the key to their own power. 
 
If you are not already a registered voter, register now. Register today. Just go out and do it. It takes five minutes to fill out the form. Those five minutes will give you more power that a lot of people around the world don’t have and may never see in your lifetime. 

 So when this November comes, and the candidate you support doesn’t win, will it be because you didn’t cast your ballot or even register to vote? Or when your candidate wins the presidency, will it because you valued your ability to choose and helped to vote him into office?

Ride That Horsey!
I walk into the chiropractor's office today and there were three kids in there waiting for their mom to get off "the rack." I smiled at them and sat down, which apparently was an open invitation to start a conversation with me. At first, I thought it was sweet that these kids were friendly and not afraid to talk to people, as they instantly grilled me about my name, my nickname, how many babies I have, and, strangely, where I work. I started getting a little suspicious, wondering if I was being monitored by the GOP. Then they all got up and like a little band of ninjas started doing kid karate on each other, bragging about how they all knew tae kwon do and loved to beat each other up. It quickly became apparent to me that these kids were totally starved for attention, and despite having each other to play with, they were probably bored with each other and were craving some sort of non-sibling stimulation. The inevitable result of their shogun kabuke theater was all three of them crying because the boy punched his sister in the stomach, which made them all start punching each other and calling each other asshole. I'm one of those people that isn't bothered by children swearing. They're just words after all. So I'm sitting there laughing, passive-aggressively egging them on as they beat each other to a pulp and curse like sailors. They all scrambled back to their seats when they heard the therapy room door open, probably expecting Momzilla to come stomping out, but it was just the chiro who had heard all the noise and came out to bring me into a different room. The kids really wanted to come in and watch her adjust me, which sort of creeped me out, and I declined, and by the time I came back out they had formed a triple decker horsey pyramid and were screaming at the little girl on the bottom that she was a bad horsey because she couldn't trot around the room with the two of them piled on her back. As I was leaving they all came running over to me, looking like they expected hugs or something, to which I quickly said goodbye and ran into the parking lot. This is what I get for showing up early to my appointment!

I've been feeling completely disconnected and out of sorts lately, which would explain the recent sparse blogging. Between all of the craziness of finishing the floors and being quarantined to two rooms upstairs and eating take out for a week and then TWO rounds of housesitting these last two weeks, and waiting and stressing about the job I came so close to getting, I just feel like I have no sense of normalcy anymore. Even my job has been irregular. I have so much spyware piling up on my computer that i can't do my normal routines. The techies say they are working on the problem, but I think they are just making spyware angry because it is honestly worse since they started trying to fix it.

Anyways, I'm finally going home tonight, to a house put back together, to home-cooked meals, to my Sweetiekins and my much-missed water pillow. I'm housesitting again in a few weeks and I must remember to bring my water pillow. I've become so attached to it and I sleep like crap when I am forced to use community pillows.

RIP Isabel Sanford.

You gave good Weezy.

This is such a mind-boggling amount of money. I think Bush needs to start worrying about how much his local gas station rasied or lowered gas prices overnight while he slept to maybe come back to earth and gain a little perspective on what it is like to live in the world of the average-financed American.

See how fast those numbers are changing? Those are THOUSANDS of dollars a second folks. Wouldn't you prefer your money to actually be working FOR you?

Which of the Humours are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are Sanguine. Warm, outgoing, and friendly, you are the life of the party. Your carefree nature can make you unpredictable and restless, however, and you tend to be disorganized, easily distracted, and even undependable. Passionate and hot-tempered, you have a lust for life in all its forms. Your creativity makes you a good starter but a poor finisher. Sanguines should look at careers in sales, acting, public speaking, and the medical profession.

Actually, sanguine is the temperament associated with the humour Blood. To be sanguine is to be confident and optimistic, and to have good coloring in the cheeks! It can also mean bloodthirsty, which I only am in my revenge fantasies.

The blood humour is also related to spring, the element air, and the liver, and according to Hippocrates, being sanguine makes you warm and moist, whatever that means.

More on temperaments here.

More on the four humours here.

waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . just waiting for the floors to dry and the phone to ring. This past weekend we refinished our hardwood floors and basically have been living out of the top floor of the house, waiting for the finish to cure so we can use the rooms again. I've also been waiting for the dreaded phone call from the school informing me if I got the job or not. As hard as I try not to think about it, the more I think about it. Plus being trapped in the top floor of the house is not making my vacation any more enjoyable. At this point I am going with the theory that no news is bad news and assuming I did not get the job. Tomorrow will be a week since the second, and very bizarre and not-at-all-encouraging, second interview, and they said they were deciding early this week. But I have to move forward that I made the top three out of probably hundreds of applicants, and I wowwed them enough to make it to the final round. And that DOES feel good because I know I am an awesome teacher, and the market is insanely competitive for teaching positions at the colleges, and if i don't get the job it's not because I didn't want it bad enough or hadn't prepared enough for the search committee. If I haven't got the job, I would just appreciate the dignity of a phone call so I can at least stop wondering, but they told me in the first round that it's more likely that I will just not hear from them, which is my signal that someone else got the job.