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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
DON'T LET MARRIAGE BRO YOU DOWN
I speak as someone who swore off marriage -- to the opportunity instead of endless lifelong lovers. Because when two people agree to love each other forever, that's all they need to establish and defend their love. Where if the two should agree later not to keep the bargain, they are free to go on with at least some departed love scarcely allowed any longer the ones who fight and sue for property.
I know gentleman and lady friends of mine who I loved for years, knew all at once, and never married, and then again never needed to break up, no finality, letting friendship as love continue even past the worst fights. When someone knocks me down and I don't want to get up in any but their arms, maybe then i'll find marriage is after all for me -- but even if so, why would I want the state or church to have any say about it. I'm married if I say so and she does too, and if it's in both us already, why need marriage?
Here is something I wrote to speak at my friend's wedding this summer:
I know gentleman and lady friends of mine who I loved for years, knew all at once, and never married, and then again never needed to break up, no finality, letting friendship as love continue even past the worst fights. When someone knocks me down and I don't want to get up in any but their arms, maybe then i'll find marriage is after all for me -- but even if so, why would I want the state or church to have any say about it. I'm married if I say so and she does too, and if it's in both us already, why need marriage?
Here is something I wrote to speak at my friend's wedding this summer:
Once upon a time the spokes fell off the world and folks got separated from one another. Love is the song that ever since led folks to get together. We here are led together, gathered together, the saying goes, here today by not love but love in concert. These two so already long beloved, their union did not initiate in marriage. For love like jazz is more than shooting stars and fallen astronauts. A marriage is not stood and watched, it’s blessed, it’s made by being witnessed.
It was for this readiness to give witness the Ancient Mariner, when he chose someone to tell his awful journey, told a wedding guest.
“Day after day, day after day…
A painted ship upon a painted ocean…
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
Of course I’m kidding but probably somewhere marriage does lie between there and Jay Hawkins words: “I put a spell on you, because you’re mine.”
Not just because marriage is itself an entrancement, but the wedding vows are of those rare acts of speech that has the performing power casting a spell has. The vow doesn’t just tell or answer, describe or imagine a state of the world as do so many other words. These words are a declaration like a nation’s declaration of independence, bringing as they are spoken a new state into being. A marriage is love in concert, as I have said, and the performance is done on our memories.
We have witnessed already today the four directions: the west with the sun, we have witnessed the east with the growing harvests, and the north where lies that mushrooming civilization, the south with the coast and its seldom storm-blasts.
Fix these surroundings in mind then while you view the unfolding. We are here to join the entrancement, to countersign as witnesses this declaration. Put it in our memories and walk into the stream.
Monday, December 22, 2008
marriage?
As of the last week or so I've had the idea of marriage stuck in my mind. I can't shake it. Rob and I swapped stories about our own parents and deduced neither of the couples were an example we'd hold ourselves to. Even so, I don't know that my parents falling short of standard is what averts me from the idea of being bound by law.
The hopeless romantic in me has always assumed that I'll know what to do when the time comes. I'd be ready to get hitched when I loved someone who thought the idea was just as ludicrous as I did. We'd be hopelessly in love and marriage would just be a matter of formality-but so what. Now I'm not so sure.
Bearing in mind how excited I am with Jenelle, I'm convinced more and more that the most beautiful part of our relationship is that we're not bound by anything other than attraction. In considering that human emotion is completely transient, to understand that someone is right beside you when they could be anywhere with anyone else is perhaps the most romantic feeling I've ever had. Trusting someone to do as they please, despite the pretenses in love or marriage is a precious certainty.
Ten years into a relationship I'd rather look at my partner and know that we've shared time together out of shear attraction than realize they had loved me at a time and we'd been married ten years.
Thoughts?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
DR. B WNTS YR MNY
what's with dr. bronner's having all these different products now?
i thought the whole point was that you only needed the one.
maybe it's the same thing in all of them, just different bottles. fancy labeling marketing scheme?
probably.
i thought the whole point was that you only needed the one.
maybe it's the same thing in all of them, just different bottles. fancy labeling marketing scheme?
probably.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
On Gay Marriage
I'd like you guys to watch this clip from the Daily Show and then read my response to it. I'm considering turning it into a speech but I need some feedback. I also think this is a crucially relevant issue to our times and an appropriate point of discussion.
the ability of a man and a woman to, as Mike Huckabee puts it, "anatomically" create a family is not put in jeopardy by the "redefinition" of the word Marriage. the only thing that changes is how many are allowed the Privilege of financial protection and legal partnership. that is what this is about. the conservative movement sees the "gay agenda" as wanting to legitimize their lifestyle, which - ironically enough - it is. and here is where we have two sides of the same coin: gay people want legal legitimacy, their opponents don't want gay people to have social legitimacy; they see the changing of the legal definition of marriage to include gays as societal condonation of the gay lifestyle, which it is. moreover, they see it as the state governments saying that the conservative christian viewpoint holds no sway in law, which they obviously dislike. short of legally forming and defining two separate religious and secular societies - short of causing further separation - how do we reconcile these two opposing viewpoints?
whether this attitude makes you a "homophobe" or not - whether this activity denies a "basic" human right - is irrelevant. this is one of many steps that gays have taken toward cultural recognition, and just like any other stigmatized minority, they have met with opposition from the traditionalist members of our society. nothing new there. the interesting thing about what the gays' opponents have done is that they have framed the debate, as stewart said, in terms of Semantics. the interesting thing about semantics is that they hold no sway on what people actually do. i could fuck my cousin and call it a marriage, but that wouldn't make it one. i could kill the old man next door and call it divorce, but that wouldn't make it one. what i do and what the law recognizes as legitimate activity are not necessarily the same. case in point: religious folk can't even agree on how to perform a marriage ceremony (i.e. what makes a marriage legitimate in the eyes of their sect) amongst themselves. the best they can come up with is "one man, one woman," but again, as stewart said, the definition of marriage has changed radically throughout the millenia; this is just its modern reinterpretation.
let us not forget that to allow tens of thousands of couples to marry overnight would create a huge strain on the insurance industry. all of a sudden they would have to be responsible for a plethora of new, legally recognized arrangements. if your husband or wife dies in the line of work or of duty, you receive insurance benefits as their legal partner, should you choose to have a policy stipulating such. right now, if you're just a domestic partner, you don't get any of that. i think we're all familiar with how little insurance companies enjoy giving their policy-holders money. again, this is about freedom - not semantics.
lunging for your bible at the mention of the word gay is not going to change the fact that marriage as a social construct has only emerged with the social legitimacy of the second partner, aka the Woman. marriage has been a legal arrangement first and a social arrangement last for nearly as long as it's been in existence. the only thing that's changed is the dictators of the law; once it was the church, no longer can it be: we, the people of this republic chose religious freedom over theocratic monarchy. with that freedom comes the regulated dearth of influence of religious sects in the secular government. whether or not the Founding Fathers were christian is again irrelevant. the Founding Fathers are dead, and we have done many things to their idea of society that would make them blush a mere 232 years later.
this is the problem: our society cannot revolve around the selfish desires of elite ideologues or their flocks if it is to consider itself fair. these people are the same breed of zealous self-styled prophet that has plagued societies with angry, backward ideas since societies began. they should be shunned and ridiculed. much to our dismay, wrapping oneself in the flag and holding a cross does much to inspire the weeping hordes of glossolalial sycophants we call our countrymen. so, it is left to we, the Ones Who Ask Questions, to create a fairer society which does not put its decisions in the hands of Mike Huckabee or his wretched ilk.
the ability of a man and a woman to, as Mike Huckabee puts it, "anatomically" create a family is not put in jeopardy by the "redefinition" of the word Marriage. the only thing that changes is how many are allowed the Privilege of financial protection and legal partnership. that is what this is about. the conservative movement sees the "gay agenda" as wanting to legitimize their lifestyle, which - ironically enough - it is. and here is where we have two sides of the same coin: gay people want legal legitimacy, their opponents don't want gay people to have social legitimacy; they see the changing of the legal definition of marriage to include gays as societal condonation of the gay lifestyle, which it is. moreover, they see it as the state governments saying that the conservative christian viewpoint holds no sway in law, which they obviously dislike. short of legally forming and defining two separate religious and secular societies - short of causing further separation - how do we reconcile these two opposing viewpoints?
whether this attitude makes you a "homophobe" or not - whether this activity denies a "basic" human right - is irrelevant. this is one of many steps that gays have taken toward cultural recognition, and just like any other stigmatized minority, they have met with opposition from the traditionalist members of our society. nothing new there. the interesting thing about what the gays' opponents have done is that they have framed the debate, as stewart said, in terms of Semantics. the interesting thing about semantics is that they hold no sway on what people actually do. i could fuck my cousin and call it a marriage, but that wouldn't make it one. i could kill the old man next door and call it divorce, but that wouldn't make it one. what i do and what the law recognizes as legitimate activity are not necessarily the same. case in point: religious folk can't even agree on how to perform a marriage ceremony (i.e. what makes a marriage legitimate in the eyes of their sect) amongst themselves. the best they can come up with is "one man, one woman," but again, as stewart said, the definition of marriage has changed radically throughout the millenia; this is just its modern reinterpretation.
let us not forget that to allow tens of thousands of couples to marry overnight would create a huge strain on the insurance industry. all of a sudden they would have to be responsible for a plethora of new, legally recognized arrangements. if your husband or wife dies in the line of work or of duty, you receive insurance benefits as their legal partner, should you choose to have a policy stipulating such. right now, if you're just a domestic partner, you don't get any of that. i think we're all familiar with how little insurance companies enjoy giving their policy-holders money. again, this is about freedom - not semantics.
lunging for your bible at the mention of the word gay is not going to change the fact that marriage as a social construct has only emerged with the social legitimacy of the second partner, aka the Woman. marriage has been a legal arrangement first and a social arrangement last for nearly as long as it's been in existence. the only thing that's changed is the dictators of the law; once it was the church, no longer can it be: we, the people of this republic chose religious freedom over theocratic monarchy. with that freedom comes the regulated dearth of influence of religious sects in the secular government. whether or not the Founding Fathers were christian is again irrelevant. the Founding Fathers are dead, and we have done many things to their idea of society that would make them blush a mere 232 years later.
this is the problem: our society cannot revolve around the selfish desires of elite ideologues or their flocks if it is to consider itself fair. these people are the same breed of zealous self-styled prophet that has plagued societies with angry, backward ideas since societies began. they should be shunned and ridiculed. much to our dismay, wrapping oneself in the flag and holding a cross does much to inspire the weeping hordes of glossolalial sycophants we call our countrymen. so, it is left to we, the Ones Who Ask Questions, to create a fairer society which does not put its decisions in the hands of Mike Huckabee or his wretched ilk.
Monday, December 8, 2008
New bicycle!
Hey folks,
I'm losing the ped. Officially. It's over. She wasn't terribly fun anyway (only kind of really fun). I just looked really, really cool in that giant fucking helmet and my fancy shoes. Man.
But hark the herald, angels be singin, pappas gettin a brand new bike! I'm thinking Scott or Bianchi from Pac Bicycle.
.jpg)
Any suggestions? Any thoughts? I'm looking for something lean and mean for fun up mountains, something super pretty to get all the babes, and something I can slap a rack and slightly bigger tires on and call a touring bike. I'm thinking a little fancy because I may have the skrill for it, and I may even keep the motobecane beater. I may even be capable of affording a fancy Bianchi.
.jpg)
I'd really appreciate any feedback. And fya'llsi, I lost my damned telephone again.
I'm losing the ped. Officially. It's over. She wasn't terribly fun anyway (only kind of really fun). I just looked really, really cool in that giant fucking helmet and my fancy shoes. Man.
But hark the herald, angels be singin, pappas gettin a brand new bike! I'm thinking Scott or Bianchi from Pac Bicycle.
.jpg)
Any suggestions? Any thoughts? I'm looking for something lean and mean for fun up mountains, something super pretty to get all the babes, and something I can slap a rack and slightly bigger tires on and call a touring bike. I'm thinking a little fancy because I may have the skrill for it, and I may even keep the motobecane beater. I may even be capable of affording a fancy Bianchi.
.jpg)
I'd really appreciate any feedback. And fya'llsi, I lost my damned telephone again.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Bikes need homes too
Hello Team.
So we all have bikes.
Some of us have lots of bikes.
I thought this might be a good solution to our problem.
$10.99 to store anything you want.
MC
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
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