I'm to the point with BO where I can't even stand to hear him talk. I have to turn it off. It took me years to get to that point with W.

Freddie Got Fingered

I always liked this movie.

Margo

My co-supervisor died last Thursday. She was a wonderful person and a brilliant scientist. I've written about deaths of friends and family on here before, but I feel like I have very little to say this time, despite the loss being quite severe. I'll miss her.

American public overwhelmingly supports a public option in health care reform. The political class overwhelmingly opposes it.

But... but... but... the political class are supposed to represent the population...

... wouldn't passing something the public wants make them more popular....

... why don't I just cover my ears and sing happy songs

stupid people

Councilor Paula-Ayn Phillips said she was afraid backing a resolution or law that decriminalizes marijuana could lead people to not being punished for driving or flying under the influence of drugs or could encourage people like surgeons to operate under the influence.

i have lots of respect for GG's work, but... what's the problem here? or, i think the answer is obvious

It's a bad time to be an American these days...

I'm not at the point where I can see "begs the question" used to mean "an obvious question that follows from this is..." and not lament the demise of the superior-in-all-ways former meaning of that phrase, but I am at the point where I recognize that I should just... let it go.

celebrate Constitution Day with me!

Today is Constitution Day. The "Constitution" was some document that some old dudes in goofy wigs wrote a long time ago. People used to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the federal government. Isn't that cute? Luckily we've made a lot of progress since then and now we know that the Constitution ensures more important things, like allowing George Bush to start wars of aggression and Barack Obama to order his employees to committ murders. Yay Constitution! Yay Government! YAY America!!!!

barely scratching was successful, by the way.

sleeping arrangments

"Sleeping together may be harmful to health and relationship."

We've been dancing around this idea for a while, but reluctant to act on it for various reasons. A recent change we've tried has been to take the two beds we own, one double and one twin, and put them right next to each other.

adspar on demand

I'd like to blog about something, but don't have any great ideas. Post an idea in the comments and I'll write about it.

her nipples are legal!

To follow up on this item, charges against the topless lady have been dropped. Turns out that nothing she did was against the law. Needless to say, the men who kidnapped her will not face any consequences.

I thought this part of the story was interesting:

Two other factors played a role in the police prosecutors’ decision to drop the charge against Nicosia, according to Duguay.

They wanted to keep the N.H. Supreme Court from having a chance to weigh in on the law, which could have happened if Nicosia was convicted and appealed, Duguay said. If asked to examine the state law dealing with indecent exposure and lewdness, the court might find that the language in the statute is too broad and then drop the entire statute, he said.

Apparently we came very close to allowing a court to review the law, which risks determining that the law is inappropriate, and having to change it! Whew, disaster averted!

more on schools

or, or, as prof crispy says:

surely schools are good at absolutely anything compared to their ability to teach individual responsibility. they're more effective at nurturing an extreme ethic of concealment, even as they try to encourage a culture of anonymous denunciation of others etc. and of course what you're subjected to in terms of actual subject-matter is standardized across all individuals, and the behavioral goals are uniformity, silence, and detailed control over people's movements and expressions to achieve homogeneity.

I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs - some chinaman in Korea took them from me - but I went out and acheived anyway!

I've been exceptionally unflexible my entire life. Touching my toes was unimaginable; I couldn't get more than 2 inches past my knees. About two weeks ago it occurred to me that this wasn't healthy, could lead to injury, etc., and that I should work on improving it.

So I've been stretching haphazardly during the day, and the improvement is pretty impressive. I can reach down to my shins now, about 2 inches above my ankles.

I used to do pilates every once in a while with Kira, and the sensation at the end of a pilates session was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Now I know that feeling is what stretching feels like.

what's mine is mine

Via Radley Balko, I notice this splendid story about how police forcibly catheterized a man suspected of drunk driving, after he had already passed a breathalizer test. When the blood and urine tests also showed he was innocent, police charged him with obstruction of justice, for resisting their efforts to shove a tube up his penis.

The state owns you. It claims your body as its property.

things we can all agree on

chick behind the veil... selfish bitch?

give it up for the boss

or, as RAtM says, the classroom's the last room to get the truth

what schools are

IOZ says schools are "miserable, enervating, spirit-crushing, thought-destroying, mind-rotting, child-processing, conformity factories." IOZ is right.

delicate sensibilities

A family member ("T") unexpectedly read my blog recently and contacted me to complain about an entry titled "give up". It is short, so I'll just repost it in all of its crude glory:

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

T said the entry showed "hatred and bigotry" towards the US and towards Christianity. Uh... no. The object of my scorn is clearly politics in the US. As I've said before, a group of people and the system that rules them are not the same, so I haven't shown hatred or bigotry towards the US. Nor have I shown hatred towards Christianity. I'm not cursing Jesus, I'm just using "Jesus ___ Christ" as a curse, as is quite common practice, e.g. "Ow I just hit my thumb with a hammer! Jesus fucking Christ, that hurts!!". I haven't shown bigotry, I've simply failed to show reverence. There's a difference between hostility towards a religion (which isn't necessarily bigotry by the way - I think I've been hostile towards religion in other entries without being bigoted) and simply refusing to embrace its sacred cows. So I think T is way off on that criticism.

T further said that "[t]his shows no respect or tolerance for the beliefs of others" which "shut[s] down any chance of a civilized debate on real issues." Now I'm not sure how many of my readers have mistaken a profanity-laced comparison of the US political process to a painful act of auto-erotic sodomization for an attempt to initiate a "civilized debate on real issues," but I'll clarify now: I was just pissed off and venting frustration. If you want to see my attempts to start a reasoned discussion, look through my other posts. There's lots there to talk about! Or, if having seen the tiny kernel of thought contained in my rant, you want to start a debate about self-inflicted damage and the political system, I'll gladly take part. I'll even be happy to keep my diction in line with your sensibilities.

What can kill a friendly debate is conflating irreverence with hatred and bigotry. If you want to have conversations about serious and emotional issues, it doesn't help to have a shut-down-the-conversation-because-of-perceived-disrespect system with a threshold so low that vocabulary trips the switch.