Jul

23

Mailbox. Open mailbox.

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Graphic designers: you MUST watch this. It’s in bold, it must be true.

What’s that you say? Can’t see the video? Here’s a link - how convenient! http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Jul

23

No threat.

Filed Under Gay | Leave a Comment

I really like this article that Owen sent to me earlier:

Same-sex marriage is no threat to society
Dana Parsons
May 17, 2008

Being a heterosexual male — not that there’s anything wrong with that — the gay-marriage debate doesn’t hit me where I live. If I had half a brain, I’d just leave the subject alone because you know how some people get when the topic is raised.

Nonetheless . . .

In overturning a ban against same-sex marriages, the California Supreme Court this week has put the hot potato back on the table, so there’s no use in hiding from it.

I’m trying to figure how the decision will make my life worse. And, almost as important, how it will make society worse.

So far, I’m coming up empty on both counts.

Perhaps you’re thinking, Yeah, but you’re a wild-eyed radical who doesn’t care about traditional social institutions.

Ha, shows what you know.

I’m a social order freak. Even if my politics liberalized as I grew up, my sense of traditional values didn’t. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, I don’t want to have a social rebellion every 20 years. How about some peace and quiet instead?

And gay marriage will disrupt the social order by doing what exactly?

In collating the various things I’ve heard over the years from gay-marriage opponents, including friends and relatives, what it seems to boil down to is that they just don’t like the sound of it.

Opposing it seems easiest for those with religious beliefs. Though many of them are buffet-style believers much of the time, they turn immutably steadfast in their certainty that homosexuality is a sin and that condoning gay marriage is an apostasy.

Easy solution. If gay marriage is against God’s will, let him handle the punishment. Why should mere mortals be the ones dispensing the judgment?

The more secular opponents tell me that marriage is for men and women and that some indefinable sense of what society stands for would be compromised if gays married each other.

There probably are various other arguments, but none make much sense to me — and I went to college for four years.

I keep thinking that if same-sex marriage posed such a threat, why isn’t it clear to me or millions of others? We understand other obvious threats, such as disease or armed robbers or sour milk.

If gay marriage is so inherently threatening to society, and if we’re telling the truth when we say we want to preserve that social order, why isn’t the gay-marriage “threat” obvious? I grew up in the church; how come gay marriage doesn’t threaten me?

Because it isn’t a threat.

There, I said it.

There’s a way to prove it. Let’s authorize same-sex marriage for five years, then see whether the country is in worse shape. See if society has noticeably worsened and if traditional marriage has suffered. If they have, in ways that are indisputably true, and if same-sex marriage is the clear culprit, then we can ban it again.

I’m not claiming a profound philosophy on the matter. As a formerly married man, I probably did more harm to the institution than any gay couple ever could.

Nor do I put same-sex marriage in the processional of classic human rights, such as female suffrage or racial discrimination. Lots of people do, but it doesn’t hit me on that level. By the way, a number of gay people have told me they aren’t particularly hung up on the issue, either.

No, my support of it is simple: We all get one life. It’s natural for people who love each other to want to marry. It’s a personal, societal and legal validation that means something to them.

As such, how dare other people tell two adults that they can’t marry? How dare other people, who it just so happens aren’t gay, decide that those who are get relegated to secondary social status?

Our laws are meant to protect us from people who do us harm — robbers, cheats, assaulters.

Gays and lesbians, it seems to me, have been consigned to a separate “criminal” category by their opponents: people whose sexual practices they don’t like. It’s the argument made a couple generations back against whites and blacks marrying — other people just didn’t like the idea.

It ought to take a little bit more than that to deny people the same shot at what I will now trot out as a radical notion: that we’re all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.

Jul

22

4 weeks.

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I’ve made it to the 1 month mark of no smoking. Yay me!

Jul

22

Pants.

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SONOFABITCH! I splashed bleach onto my favorite pants by mistake. Just a little, but enough that I can never wear them to work again. GAH!

Looks like I’m off to go pants shopping…

Jul

21

Lofts.

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This is what I imagined loft living would look like. But I lived in a loft, and I can tell you that it looked NOTHING like that.

Thanks, Design*Sponge. (For making me feel inadequate)

Jul

20

Unacceptable.

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No update to this blog since July 7?! Simply unacceptable.

My last note said that the movers had arrived. Awhile after I wrote that they left. In between these two occurrences they broke a few things, scuffed a few walls but all-in-all did a very decent job of moving all my belongings (some very old and some very heavy) from Highland Mill to their current locale in Dilworth.

All of those belongings, including Winston, gave a sigh of relief once it was over. This neighborhood is a wonderful place to live, and I’m looking forward to uncovering the quirks of this old building (one of which I already know to be a lack of water pressure).

I’m doing this condo right in terms of the living. The paint looks great. The artwork that I took to the framers is going to look great on it. I’m taking the time to think through the unpacking (which could be read as lazy, but I have a plan…) It’s a process - as any move is - but it’s going well and I’m comfortable with it’s pace.

On an unhappy note, I think I’ve injured my right shoulder. I fell down. Stop laughing. It hurts.

And now for something that has changed my life: Evernote. Sign up for an account and give up sticky-notes forever. Trust me.

Jul

7

The movers…

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…are here. How exciting!

Jul

7

Argh.

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My latest addition to “Things You Find When You Move” isn’t something I found, it’s something I’m losing. It’s my blog, I can change the rules like that (muwahahaha!)

I’m losing my friggin’ mind.

The movers arrive in T-minus 10 hours and I’m simply not ready. Did I mention that I have to go to work for a few of those remaining 10 hours? I have a feeling I’ll be making several trips in my car as well, as I simply think getting everything prepped for the moving van is impossible. I’m looking forward to moving back to my old neighborhood, but I’d prefer to live there without all this process-work and involvement. Someone come finish this for me!

Jul

6

More for the list.

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Let’s add these to the list of strange things you find when you move:

Wisdom teeth

My name written in Hebrew

Bag-o-underwear (which I will never, ever, ever wear again - none of them are flattering!)

Volkswagen pen with the little Beetle on top that you detach and roll around on the desk

Cash (I’m a dollaraire!)

Another Starbucks gift card - I won’t have to pay for grande soy chai tea lattes for awhile

Play-Doh - and how! (I think I’m most excited about this little discovery…)

Also while packing I found boxes that I never unpacked when I moved out of Michael’s townhouse to my first apartment in Dilworth. Don’t call me a slacker! I know exactly what’s in them…sort of. They’re full of bric-à-brac that I could almost certainly live without, but I can’t bring myself to purge these vestiges. I guess instead I’ll do what I’ve done with them for 3 years and turn all-too-scare closet space into a mausoleum. I think in this most recent move I’ll have at least one more box - maybe two - to add to this complete waste of space. But at least I have Play Doh.

Jul

6

Jovi punch…

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… full recovery!

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