You've seen 'em, right?  Those insipid minivans with the stick figures on the back window that show "Dad" and "Mom" and "Susie" and "Lori" and even the pets, "Pogo" and "Muffin," on the back?  The ones with the "My child is an honor student at Snooty Liberal Arts Magnet School" and "Jesus loves ME at Landover Baptist!" And all topped off with a plate cover that says "The Decker Clan."  Gee, y'all, are you SURE you've given enough information to the pissed off nutjob you just cut off in traffic?

Surely you're not one of these condition white morons, right?  You aren't the kind of person who thinks everyone in the world is all peaches and cream and smiles to think of you and your happy little family in your happy little world, right?  But mostly you're not the kind of parent who would dream of compromising your family's safety, right, giving away your children's names and likely locations for most of the day to EVERY FREAKIN STRANGER WHO PASSES YOUR VEHICLE?  I mean, why not just write your social security number on the side of your car and post your passwords on myspace?  Nah, never mind, your password's probably "Pogo" or "Muffin" anyway.

Okay, let's put a finer point on it.  Imagine little Susie or Lori, confronted outside their school on the way home by a nice looking young man who calls them by name (extra credit for having their last name, too) and says he's the new youth minister at Landover Baptist, and that their mom sent him to pick them up because their dog Pogo's sick and mom had to take him to the vet.  "What's our safe word?"  "Oh, gee, your mom told me, and I ... um... is it Muffin?"  So much for little Susie and Lori.  And all of this, just from information you give out freely to everyone who passes you on the road.

Look, I get it about wanting to share information about yourself, wanting to show your pride in your family, wanting to personalize your nondescript vehicle so you can find it in the parking lot.  Not wanting to appear paranoid...  I get it.  It's not too different from posting personal information in Myspace.  The difference is, in Myspace, you can control to a large degree who can see your information and what information they can see.  On the L.A. freeway?  You have NO control over who gathers that information or what use they make of it.

Here's what you do.  Grab yourself a nice razor blade and some of that Goo-gone stuff and strip that shit off your car and THINK before you go putting that kind of information on your vehicle again.  Then hug your kids and TELL them how proud you are of them.  That will mean more to them than any stupid stickers on the car.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."   -- Lewis Carroll, "The Walrus & the Carpenter" from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Yeah, this is one of THOSE blogs.  This one I have had in mind for a while but didn't really have the impetus to write it ere now.  Is it likely to make people a little uncomfortable?  Gods, but I hope so.

First, I have a confession to make.  I'm not really a cougar, not zoological sense nor in the street sense.  I've never sought out younger men as romantic/sexual partners, believe it or not.  That probably doesn't seem too convincing, considering my most recent long-term relationships have both been with men significantly younger than I.  That's just the way things fell.  I almost turned each of them away because of the age difference until they each (and in different ways) convinced me that it simply wasn't an obstacle. In truth, the men I've loved I would have loved no matter their age, and the men I didn't love?  Likewise.

That makes me a faux cougar, I suppose.  Even so, I guess I can clarify some points for those who feel it's their place to disapprove of the romantic choices of others and for those who are simply curious about how such an unconventional relationship can work.  Yes, as you've probably already gathered, there IS something of a political message to this.

The notion that who we love should be subject to a checklist a la match.com is absurd.  Neither of the two men I've loved since my divorce has met more than half the criteria on the virtual checklist I started with, and worse yet, any mainstream dating service would have failed to match us up at all SOLELY based on the age criterion, even before looking at any other factor. 

I grant you, the average 44 year old woman and the average 22 year old man have nothing in common.  They likely wouldn't even see each other if they passed in a parking lot, although if they both drank enough, they might take each other home for a night.  This is the part where I must boldface average.  I'm not average, and I don't date average men of any age.  Therein lies the key.

Some of the disapproval comes from people who question my maturity, mistaking my joie de vivre for immaturity or even shallowness.  I find that losing one's ability to laugh is not a sign of maturity, it's a sign of getting old.  To quote the immortal Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend, "Hope I die before I get old."  I've seen humorless old men of 25 with one foot in the grave and the other stuck in the mud, and I've seen laughing young men of 85 who were very much alive and engaged with life.

Some no doubt wonder why, when Mike can have any woman he wants, why did he choose me?  The simplest answer I have, and it came from him, is that I make him happy.  Likewise, he makes me happy.  And after all, what more can you ask of a relationship or a person than that?

How do we make it work?  Well, it's not always a cakewalk, particularly when people lay a lot of pressure on us in various ways.  From the guy at the national convention who said Mike should have proposed to me on the stage at national (eegads, we'd only been dating 2 months!) to my ex boyfriend who found it "ridiculous" that I should be dating someone even younger than he, to friends who interrogate us in rather invasive and sometimes rude terms about the relationship on a regular basis to those who simply don't approve to the girls who shamelessly hit on Mike when I'm with him, like I'm not even there.  I mean, I couldn't POSSIBLY be his girlfriend, could I?

So the question that comes to mind is, and the ultimate point of all this is, why does anyone outside a given relationship care?  Especially enough to hassle the people for having that relationship?  Why the compulsion amongst certain groups of people to condemn any non-traditional relationship, whether for being of mixed races or same gender or large age difference?  (I do notice society is more "forgiving" of older men with younger women, ostensibly because of the whole fertility thing.)

What I told my son when he was little and people were hard on him for marching to a different drummer was this:  When you fit with people's expectations and assumptions, they're comfortable and accepting. But when you shake up those expectations and assumptions, they become very disturbed, wondering what else is going to get yanked out from under them, and sometimes they lash out, especially when your challenge of their assumptions hits close to home.

For Mike to be a little over half my age and for us to be together does no harm to my neighbors' relationships in the comfort of their homes up and down the street.  Thankfully, there's no law against our relationship.  At least not yet, although the way people get so rabid about it, I have no doubt there will be a constitutional amendment to outlaw age-difference relationships any day now.  But you know, even if it weren't legal, we'd still probably be together.  And it would cause exactly as much harm as it does now, which is to say... none.

In 1954, my parents could not marry in their state of residence because my father is white, and my mother is Chinese-American.  They had to find a state that did not have anti-miscegenation laws in order to express their love for each other.  Their being married did not harm the marriages of the racially "pure" couples up and down the street.

Likewise, it doesn't harm Rob and Kai's neighbors for them to be married.  Legally.  It's a little hard to wrap your mouth around "his husband" the first few times, but at the end of the day, their relationship and the legality of it do no harm to anyone.  And just as my parents' marriage didn't destroy the very fabric of space-time, neither does theirs.

It makes no sense to me that people will try everything in their power to stop an honest expression of love when there's so much hate in the world.  But then, these are the same people who get uncomfortable with public displays of affection like kissing or hugging but who have no problem fighting nastily with their spouses in public.  There's something very wrong with that, people.

So after all this, the cougar's growl isn't as narcissistic as perhaps it appeared at first.  Those of you in California, we have a very important vote coming up in November, and that is the vote on Proposition 8.  I'm urging you, as someone in a very happy if non-traditional relationship, to vote no.  Let's keep the government and for that matter the prying eyes and minds of busybody do-gooder gossipmongers out of our private lives and out of our bedrooms.

Look at prop 8 and remember, what they're asking is, Is who someone else loves really any of your business?  Please make your answer NO.

 

Ready?  You might want to sit down for this, it's pretty radical.  Need a drink of water or anything first?  Okay, here it is.

Marriage as a legal concept should be abolished for everyone.  Done away with.  That is not to say that marriage as a commitment should be abolished, just that marriage as a legal concept should be abolished. 

I assure you, I'm not being fashionably cynical, in spite of having gone through a rather harrowing divorce.  I actually do still believe in commitments and in marriages.  Rings and things, you know, the whole nine yards.  And yeah, I watch the old couples who hold hands at the park, and I still think that "forever" means something.  I'm an incurable romantic, I guess.

But here's the thing: 

Marriage between consenting adults should be no more the government's business than whether or not you smoke pot or whether or not you seek a controversial medical procedure.  Not. Their. Business.

My solution, quite simply, is that we privatize "marriage" completely.  Leave the definition of that word to the families and friends, the clergy if any… "Private" does not necessarily mean a few family members crammed into the judge's chamber at the courthouse.  It can mean the Ritz Carlton with 10,000 of your closest friends.  In this case, I'm using the word "private" to mean non-government.  And yeah, I'm a big fan of degovernmentalizing as much as possible.  (I think I just made that word up… If you use it, I get royalties.  :-] )

Since there are currently legal considerations tied to the relationship formerly known as marriage under my perfect system, let's have instead a government-sanctioned "legal domestic partnership" that would allow any group of consenting adults sharing a single domicile (meaning apartment, house, tarpaper shack, whatever) to partner up to share responsibility for their finances, their children and each other.  All the societal perqs and so forth pertaining to "marriage" as we know it now.

Any group of consenting adults.  A man and a woman, two guys, two girls and a guy, a brother and sister, parents and their adult children, three guys and two girls, one dark haired girl with seven really short guys… as long as they share a living space, they should be able to create this kind of partnership to share rights and responsibilities with each other.

What about incest, you say?  What about polygamy, you say?  WHAT ABOUT THEM?  Nothing says these consenting adults are or are not sleeping together.  But let's say they are.  SO WHAT?  That's simply nobody's business but their own.  Realistically, unless you put a camera in the bedrooms (and dining rooms and showers and hallways and balcony railings) of every home and hotel room in America, you won't stop incest or threesomes or polygamy or any other expression of sexuality, not in any meaningful way.  Neither will you encourage it by not involving the government.  It would be a welcome return to privacy…

Then, if the people involved want to call it a "marriage," that should be their prerogative, with no governmental baggage attached to it and certainly no constitutional amendments or other silliness quibbling over the use of a word.

I applaud the governator and the courts of my home state, California, for finally following Massachusetts' lead and acknowledging the precedent set in Loving v. Virginia, that marriage is a basic right of man for ALL people, not just same-race people, and by extension, not just straight people.  It's a great start.  Assuming we can keep the authoritarian righteous right from pushing through a constitutional amendment to take rights away from a group of citizens who have not infringed on anyone else's rights, it's one more step toward the light.

Stop hate.  Stop prejudice.  But don't stop people who love each other from being able to celebrate that, even if their particular "style" of love is not your personal cup of tea.

Moonlight on a Starlit Sea 
by Jordan MacLane

Crackling, parched,
A taste of thick blood at my lip
Deep in my bones,
Dead dreams dry as dust
Ancient as race memory
This thirst, this emptiness
My constant companion
"Alone," it says
"Alone," I say

Then sweet and unexpected,
I am quenched
Drinking from an endless cup
Sweat, a gush of passion
I drown but in a dewdrop
I throw myself joyfully from the cliff
Into the vasty sea.
"I love you," he gasped
"I love you," I gasp

But the tide is out,
I shatter upon the crags below
Broken, shaking, cold
Alone, nowhere left to go
I claw my way back
Up the cliff wall,
Scrabbling upward,
Body aching, thirst building
I give in and sip at brackish catchpools
Lukewarm and sickening.
"Hey sexy," they say
"Let's get out of here," I say

The sea pounds the rocks
And strangers pound my flesh
Rhythmic and cold, flooding to crisis
The tide goes out again
Unmarked, unmissed,
I wake alone under the cold sun
A bit of my soul worn away like the rock
Sore, used, disgusted
And I climb again,
Ignoring the tide pools of filth
That mean nothing
Ignoring the stones.
"Alone," I say.
"Alone," they echo.

Atop the cliff again I stand.
There is no sea for me.
There is nothing here.
I will not believe again.
I will not pretend
To hear the tide come in.
The dust of desert overwhelms
The salt mist of sea.
I shut my eyes against the desolation
"Alone," I murmur, tasting the dry word
"Alone," I murmur, and turn away

Cool breeze rises,
A whisper at my ear
A gentle laugh, 
A soft caress like a lover's lips
The sunset's warmth fills my empty hand
Fills and gently squeezes it
Engulfing me, wrapping me,
Protecting me
And I gasp, fighting against it
Fighting against him
A dream, held at a distance
No more than that,
No more than a dream
"Alone," I insist
"Alone," I insist again

His gentle kiss touches my lips
Asking, feeling, learning, not demanding
Not forcing
My body answers his
My soul answers his
His heat, his kisses
At my throat, my breast,
My eyes, my mouth,
The back of my knee,
The soft cleft between my thighs
And I gasp
"I can't," I murmur
"You can," he smiles

I taste the sea in his kiss
I taste myself in his kiss
I dare not open my eyes
I dare not look into
The eyes of this phantom
But he will not let me go
Will not let me slip away
Into desolation,
I take his kiss for courage
I open my eyes to his
And see there
Moonlight on a starlit sea
Endless, vast, deep
The cliff gives way beneath me
I fall
And there is no fear
"Together," his eyes say
"Together," mine say.

(c) 2008 by Jordan MacLane,  all rights reserved

Someone posted a bulletin earlier today titled "Do you believe the word God should stay in American culture?"

Well, the title was, of course, misleading.  It wasn't about insane rabid atheistic efforts to strike the word God from the vocabulary of America nor remove all churches and religious holidays, as one might expect.  Nope.  It was about the word God appearing in the pledge of allegiance and on our currency.

So often, the religious mistake efforts to remove "under God" and "In God We Trust" from the pledge and from our currency as an attack on their religious beliefs, as if we evil atheists and agnostics want to take away their religion.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If you've spare time to burn and want  to understand atheism better, please by all means, go to my multiply blog and read my discourse on atheism.  That's not what this is about, though.

It's about whether "God" should be part of official public government business in a country that claims to have religious freedom.  As long as the pledge is spoken in public schools, including "in God" in the pledge, which every child is made to speak, is a violation of the establishment clause.  Likewise, having it printed on our public currency is a violation of the establishment clause because it means a group of people like myself is having to pass currency, which were originally promises of payment, that contain religious ideas we do not believe.  In other words, both issues force people to say, whether explicitly or implicitly, something they do not believe in.  No majority vote can make that moral.

Consider this:  Would a good Christian feel comfortable saying a pledge that went something like this?  "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.  And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under Vishnu, with liberty and justice for all..." honestly?  No, and why is that?  Because you're promising something you do not believe.

Fortunately for you, we're not looking to replace God with Vishnu or Ahura Mazda or Quan Yin or any of a million other gods.  We simply don't want to be made to lie.

By leaving "under God" out of the pledge, it does not make Christian or Muslim or other religious children say something that is against their beliefs, or lie about what they believe and does not weaken their faith.  By leaving it in, the atheistic or agnostic child IS forced -- yes, forced, if not by law but by extreme peer pressure and teacher sanction -- to say something he does not believe in, to PROMISE something he cannot promise.

My son at the age of seven came to me and asked me, "Mom, is it okay to promise something you know you can't do?"  I of course told him no, thinking this was just some thing between him and his friends. The next day I got a call from the school.  He had refused to say the pledge of allegiance because he said he could not pledge to a nation under God since he does not believe in God.  And he was ridiculed mercilessly by the teacher and the students.  They called me because he was being "a disruption" in the class by refusing to speak the pledge.  So this hits pretty close to home for me.

Likewise, by leaving "In God We Trust" off the currency, it does not harm the faith of the faithful, but leaving it on DOES have the atheist or agnostic passing essentially promissory notes that say things they do not believe.  Forcing us to lie again.

Does it really harm the faith of the faithful to be without those words on currency or in the pledge?  I should hope not.  If it does, seems to me you need to spend more time with your spiritual advisors and with your nose in your scripture than trying to play the pharisee, putting your conspicuous piety on display for all to see while your internal faith is weak. 

Matthew 6:5-6

5And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

 6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

So you see, this isn't about anyone wanting to remove God from American culture.  Hell, most of us celebrate Christmas and Easter, and we've even been known to go to church weddings without bursting into flames or anything.  No, we just don't want someone else's religion forcing us to lie.

Sitting here with a one-hour delay in the Atlanta airport, coming back from Richmond where I got to hear about "States Rights" and "the War of Northern Aggression" over lunch, and how welfare’s worse than slavery because at least with slavery you got some work out of ’em...  and in fairness, I believe (I hope?) some of this was said tongue-in-cheek... still, I feel like I want to touch on the whole "States Rights" thing.

"States rights" is not always but often used to weasel around and try to allow for things that are otherwise unconscionable, like not granting equal citizenship rights to all people born in this country, or like stripping women of their sovereignty over their own bodies. 

And why not?  Why shouldn’t individual communities be allowed to pass whatever laws they want?  To a very large degree, they can and do.  The only laws they can’t pass are those that violate the U.S. Constitution, and even at that, they can pass them.  They just get tried and overthrown as unconstitutional, that’s all.  It makes sense.  They’re part of the U.S., and the Constitution protects the rights of the PEOPLE.  The states should NEVER have the right to infringe on the rights of the people, especially those guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

"Let the individual states decide for themselves," they say.  Decide what, that black citizens have to ride in the back of the bus or attend separate schools or that businesses can (band together and) force those of different ethnicities sit at different lunch counters?  That women should be tried for murder for ending a pregnancy?  That’s a cop-out.  All that is is people saying, well, the majority of the rest of the country agrees that these people should have these rights, but me and my peeps here don’t agree, so we want the right to ignore that.  Bullshit.

Those good people who promote the "states rights" doctrine so enthusiastically often don’t realize that it’s been coopted by those who would use greater power to the states, not to increase people’s freedoms, as most of us would have it, but to infringe on people’s freedom.  That sword cuts both ways.

Have a care when you shuffle oppression from one level of government to another instead of abolishing it utterly.  The usual truism is that it’s better to be oppressed by 300 tyrants one mile away than one tyrant 300 miles away, but here’s a thought:  Why not skip oppression altogether?

I’ll be quite honest.  This is a topic that I really hate talking about.  I hate talking about it because, for one thing, people get hysterical talking about it and don’t argue from their heads but from their hearts.  They drag out the horror show pictures of dismembered "babies" or they bring out the horrors of back alley abortions...

The truth is, fervent, thoughtful Libertarians line up on both sides of the question, and they can make reasonable Libertarian arguments for both sides.  This is one reason why the topic is so contentious year after year amongst Libertarians.

So why in the world am I bringing this up now?  Why open this horrific can of worms?

Glad you asked, friend, glad you asked! 

I bring it up now because the Libertarian Party at the state- and national-levels is drawing up the 2008 platforms, and nearly every one of these platforms has an abortion plank that is being nibbled to death by ducks at this point.  Even in the women’s caucus, we’re at something of an impasse because the pro-life Libertarians will accept nothing short of a pro-life platform plank (coming out against abortion-as-murder), and the pro-choice Libertarians do not see prohbition of abortion as a proper Libertarian stance.

Some housekeeping about my personal position on this:  *Knock on wood* I’ve never been faced with the decision of getting an abortion myself.  My son is the result of a planned pregnancy, and he was always wanted.  I’m a firm believer that prior planning prevents piss poor performance, so I take care of business at the front end. So to speak.  But failing that, only an extreme medical issue would lead me to abortion.   That’s ME, though.  I’m financially independent, mature, responsible... I can make such a decision for myself.  I cannot and will not make that decision for another woman.  Even I am not THAT arrogant.

I said above that other Libertarians articulate an arguably legitimate anti-choice position, with the notion that the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are listed in order of precedence and so the infant’s right to live supercedes its mother’s right to liberty. 

Here’s why I don’t buy that.  That only flies when you’re positioning a baby against a grown woman.  Let’s take another look at it, but this time let’s sidestep the issue of whether or not the unborn child is "alive" or whether it’s "human" or even whether it’s a "citizen."  :Let’s replace the little bugger with a full-tilt-boogie American adult citizen who votes and everything, which will demonstrate why the question of where life begins is moot.  Let’s call our citizen "Bob."

Does Bob have the right to coopt another citizen’s body for his life support?  In every instance of medical ethics and law, the answer is a resounding NO.  He can’t demand your heart.  He can’t confiscate your kidneys.  Taken to an extreme, he cannot commandeer the body of a young woman walking down the hospital corridor as his life support for 9 months while he recovers from an illness or an accident, even if his death is imminent without her.

So much for life superceding liberty.  Bob cannot enslave another human being to save his life.  Period.

In answer, some would argue, well, but pregnancy is arguably voluntary.   If a woman is willing to abstain from sex, she will not get pregnant, they say.  Interestingly, they make rather hypocritical allowances for abortion for rape or incest victims, too.  What’s up with that?  Either the child is innocent of its conception or it is not.  Either the child has the right to live, or it does not.  No, this hypocrisy belies the scarlet letter mentality that is really at the heart of the pro-life stance.

But y’know what?  Notwithstanding instances of failed birth control or rape or any of a thousand situations where pregnancy is not, in fact, "voluntary," let’s go with it.  Let’s assume, for simplicity’s sake since it’s not actually true, that all pregnancies are voluntary. 

Back to Bob.  Even assuming the young woman walking up the corridor consents to provide life support to him, she can AT ANY TIME revoke that consent and walk away, even if it kills Bob, and she cannot be held as a murderer.  Why?  Because she has sovereignty over her own body and how it is used.

Here’s where it gets dodgy.  What about when the child CAN survive outside the womb, when someone else can take over his life support?  Then obviously, the mother is no longer in a position of being sole provider of life support and no longer has THAT right to discontinue providing her body as support. 

Once the child is outside her body, that particular right ends. However, now as his mother, she still has the right to terminate heroic measures for life support if that is her wish, provided she has not signed over custody for the child to someone else.

This makes late term abortion potentially iffy.  Personally, I’m not a fan except in the instance where it is an act of love and mercy on the part of the mother to prevent a life of suffering for a severely deformed or damaged child.  But here’s the thing.  As a Libertarian, in good conscience I must support this right for all mothers if I would support it for any mother.

So what do I think the Libertarian platform plank(s) should say?

Abortion is a deeply personal matter between a patient and her doctor.  The government (at every level) should have no role in the decision whatsoever.

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas at the Libertarian State Leadership Conference -- a somewhat misleading name since it implies that it's just leadership from within a single state that got together.  Actually, it was a convention of the leadership of EACH of the state parties as well as the Libertarian National Committee, which is the governing body of the Libertarian Party, and seven of the Libertarian Presidential candidates, including my boss, George Phillies.  The conference was made up of about 200 of the most powerful people in the Libertarian Party, including the party's founder, David Nolan.

To tell the truth, I was a bit nervous about going.  My only interaction with the LNC had been a rather scathing letter I wrote to them when they turned their backs on their own candidates to invite a candidate from another party to seek our nomination and then made available to that candidate's campaign a resource that was paid for by Libertarian donations to the Libertarian Party.  A resource that that campaign subsequently broke by accident and rendered unusable for the Libertarian campaigns coming into our own primaries. 

Now, I don't regret a single word of that letter.  Everything I said was absolutely true and I still stand by it, although having met them and learned that the support for the measure was not as "unanimous" as it appeared, I might have eased off on the scathing rhetoric just a little. 

One of the things they and apparently a lot of other people did not understand was that our objection had nothing to do with WHICH candidate it was -- they got caught up in the fact that the candidate happened to be Ron Paul, when in fact that had nothing at all to do with it.  Had it been McCain or Clinton or Obama or Kucinich, my reaction, which very closely mirrored our campaign's reaction, would have been the same or worse.

Anyway, so there was the issue of the scathing letter which I'd heard through the grapevine had made quite an impression and had been discussed at length...  Needless to say, I was half expecting to get slapped, half expecting to get the cold shoulder.  I was afraid, in fact, that I would be a liability to the candidate by my mere presence.

As it turned out, however, most of the LNC members were not only civil but open and friendly with me and were willing to listen to what I had to say once they met me and saw that I wasn't actually an evil fire-breathing harpy from hell.  Eventually they understood that it had nothing to do with Ron Paul and everything to do with separating a private Libertarian's own personal desire to support a very visible candidate from that same Libertarian's fiduciary responsibilities to the party and its own candidates when s/he is a member of the LNC.  In fact, several seemed to agree with me on that point.

Since this was my first LSLA meeting, I had a lot of people to meet and names to learn.  I talked to Libertarians from all over the country, and I met the candidates and spoke with the sanest of them.

Now, I could go on at length about the silliness of the troofer movie marathon the first day and the guest troofer... I mean speaker... Dylan Avery.  I can go into how hilarious it was that the moderator of the debate (a troofer himself and the one who had organized the whole troofer movie marathon etc) thought the toughest question he could throw at George Phillies (who is an MIT educated PhD in physics) was about how the WTC towers could have fallen more or less straight down...

The look on George's face reminded me of Brer Rabbit:  "Please don't throw me in the briar patch!"  Hehe.  Everyone else got actual tough policy questions, and George?  He gets a freshman physics problem to solve.

George's reply was essentially, "It's this mysterious force I like to call... GRAVITY," and added that any competent freshman in physics could solve that problem on the back of an envelope.  He explained the whole thing in very simple terms that drew enthusiastic applause from the audience. 

My point in mentioning any of this is that I want to emphasize that "troofer" is not synonymous with Libertarian.  We have our share of nuts, goodness knows, just like any other party.  But some of this "nutty goodness" we can't really own as a party, like troofers.

The only hint of bad blood about the whole LNC debacle was when all the other candidates were asked about their political views by the audience.  When it came time for George's audience question, he was challenged (by someone who was put up to asking the question by a puppeteer) as to why he was calling for the LNC and its leadership to resign over the resolution regarding Ron Paul, the one I talked about earlier.

If they expected George to flinch or be cowed, they were disappointed because he answered them quite readily.  He said essentially what I said above, that it was a betrayal of their duties TO THE PARTY to offer Libertarian resources to a candidate from another party.  It doesn't matter which party, and it honestly doesn't matter which candidate.  Libertarian resources are for Libertarian candidates.  This caused something of a row after the debate, but it was resolved between gentlemen, and I believe the party ended up stronger in the end.

All in all, our sense of it was that our support grew substantially after the debate.  But a lot of other good came about, too.  Jingozian's "boys" were very friendly and wanted assurance from me that no matter which of our candidates gets the nomination in May, we would work together to help that candidate in the general election.  Wayne Root was very personable and friendly, as was Mike Jingozian himself, who sat at our table during dinner.  Steve Kubby was likewise very civil and open to discussion.  Bob Jackson was very nice, very smart and professional.  They all had nothing but great things to say about George and how much they respected him, which was nice to hear.  So the campaigns are all on friendly terms, at least those that were there.  It's a contest between gentlemen, not street thugs.

The only two I didn't get to talk to at length were Daniel Imperato (Knight of Bonaria, remember) and Jim Burns.  I don't know either of these men well enough to comment on whether they are also of a gentlemanly bent, but Imperato styles himself a nobleman, and Burns seems like a southern gentleman from way back, so I imagine they are of a like mind.

A lot was decided at this convention, as one might imagine.  A lot of state chairs went home and reported to their parties on this meeting.  And as I go from state to state on behalf of my candidate, I will be working to keep that momentum building.

I look forward to meeting those of you in the states where I will be going. 

 

Rules are,once you've been tagged,you must write a blog of 10 weird/random little known facts/habits about yourself. Choose 10 people to be tagged, list their names and why..Tell them to read your blog..

1.  I've been through over 1,000 cities in my life so far.  I suppose my goal should be to travel through another 1,000 or so before I'm outta here.

2.  I wasn't born an atheist.  Well, actually, that's not true, I WAS born an atheist.  But I was raised by fundamentalist Christians and never heard the word "atheist" until I was 16, and I spent many long years worried that something was wrong with me.  When I learned there were other people in the world like me, I literally cried.

3.  All my friends have always been male.  I've just never really got along that well with women, and the few women I have managed to make friends with have either betrayed me or I've kept them at arm's length so they can't. 

4.  I speak French in my sleep.  This is the result of a car accident when I was an exchange student in France where I had a concussion and "lost" English for about four hours.  Eventually, to my great relief, English came back, but at night, I still dream almost exclusively in French, and when I talk in my sleep, it's invariably in French. 

5.  Dancing has the same effect on me that drinking has on a lot of other women, except that it doesn't make me stupid or take away my judgment.  It does, however, get rid of my inhibitions pretty readily.

6.  I have a very strong and very strange reaction to beer on the breath of a man I'm attracted to.  The stronger the attraction, the more... intense the reaction. A boyfriend of mine used to take advantage of that most mercilessly. 

7.  I've never dyed my hair, and I don't have any plans to do so ever.  Heh now watch, I'll get another gray hair and freak right out and go hit the Miss Clairol or something.  But not at this point.

8.  I admit it, I like dressing like a girl.  Dresses, high heels, makeup.  So sue me.  Life's too short to wear boring clothes.  I'm not particularly vain.  I just feel that it's respectful to people to dress to meet them, even people you don't know.

9.  I love a gentleman.  I have very little use for men (or anyone) who would treat people in general but especially women and doubly especially ME carelessly, like an old baggage being lugged along.  I like having my chair pulled out for me, and I like having doors opened for me.  I like when a gentleman rises when I approach the table.  I like knowing that we could be having dinner with the Queen of England or with "the guys" at the local bar & grill and that my date has enough of a social clue that his dress and manner will be appropriate to the occasion.  I absolutely loathe having to apologize for the boorishness of my date, which on occasion I have had to do.

10.  I have a nasty habit of not being able to put myself to sleep at night lately.  That's why once again it's 5:28am and I'm still awake, about to see the sunrise from the wrong end of the day.

Okay, folks who are tagged:

Starbuck, Mike T, Knutte (if he's ever on here), Nishanth, Scott, Brett, Jon, the other Scott (and I'll leave it to both of you to figure which is Scott and which is the "other" Scott), Zaphod and Rich.

I don't normally go into very personal very private stuff in here, and I definitely try not to whine.  Not my style at all.   I know, some people would think erotic poetry is "personal" or "private" (if any of it is even left in my blog), but there's a difference:  It's creative, it's art.  Well, some of it's art.  Some of it's just an excuse to talk dirty hehe.  But I digress...

This blog comes raw and pretty much unedited from my heart, for what it's worth, in all its campy, corny, self-evident DUH-ness.  But anyway, here is the story.  I'll try to remember that brevity is the soul of wit.

See, I was pretty sick for the last several months.  It started with what I thought was a simple spider bite that left a painful lump under my arm but the general feeling of sickness got worse as the months passed, even after the lump was gone. 

I swear, it was one thing after another, and I chalked it up to just catching every little thing that went by this winter:  Flu, then stomach flu, then food poisoning, chest cold....  The illnesses wouldn't go away or would return, cuts and scrapes weren't healing...  I grew up in a doctor's family, so I knew very well what those symptoms could mean, but I chose to ignore them, thinking I was being a tragedienne.  I knew I was in good shape, or at least I had been when this all started, and I could fight anything.  I could beat anything.  I could not afford to be weak.  So I didn't really tell anyone except to say that I was sick and that I'd go to the doctor "eventually."

Finally, I really had no choice but to go see a doctor.  It had got bad enough that I was barely able to get myself out of bed during the day, barely able to groom and dress myself, and even at that, some days I just couldn't.  For almost all of January, I was all but bedridden because I was so sick and so weak.  I rallied for the one weekend when George was in town and made it through, but it took a toll on me, pretending to be my usual up and energetic self when I was that sick.  I knew I had to do something.  So I screwed my courage to the sticking place and went to see my doctor.

He did all the usual stuff.  But one of the tests he ran came back showing "a few abnormalities."  His nurse told me over the phone that I needed to go for a biopsy "as soon as possible."  Well, as soon as possible turned out to be three weeks later.  He prescribed something to help with the infections, and it seemed to help.  But the word biopsy stuck in my brain.  Biopsy.  He thinks I have cancer.  Me.  Martial artist, dancer, incredibly healthy and active person, ME.  CANCER.

Now, three weeks is a HELL of a long time to spend thinking about the possibility that you have cancer.  It's so easy to go drama queen.  A lot of thoughts went through my mind, but given the other symptoms -- the wounds that wouldn't heal, the illnesses that wouldn't go away -- I was reasonably sure that the biopsy would be positive and it would be a malignancy.  Classic symptoms, after all.

Treatment options:  Some would destroy my quality of life, some would leave me a lonely, bitter, sexless old hag...  Don't lecture me on how there's more to a woman than this part or that part or how that's not how it has to be.  Intellectually I know that.  But it's one thing when you're married or at least in a loving relationship and have people who support you no matter what happens to your body or your sex drive or your identity as a woman.  It's another when you're alone in the world and face having that identity harmed if not destroyed.  Viscerally, no, I could not subject myself to a life with that kind of future.

I likewise would not subject my son to watching his mother wither away and die, either physically or emotionally, like that.  So I made some contingency plans to see to it that I would not die a horrible lingering humiliating death, whether of cancer or of the aftermath of "surviving" it.

I wasn't obsessive or suicidal, don't get me wrong.  I was making one of the few active choices left to someone who is facing a terminal illness, and it gave me a sense of power and oddly enough of hope.  POLITICAL MESSAGE ALERT:  Such a choice should be available to those who want to exercise it.

Everything got put on hold.  Every plan, every new friendship or potential relationship, EVERYTHING, pending this biopsy.  Why make beds in a burning house, right?  I withdrew from a lot of people I cared about and only told a few very close friends that I knew I could trust not to pity me or reject me over it.  I focused on the campaign to keep my mind off things.

Even so, the results of this stupid biopsy took on a huge amount of weight in my world, more than perhaps they should have.  But then, that's an easy judgment to make from the outside -- oh, quit whining, quit worrying about it.  Not as easy when you have a child to take care of.  But even I got sick of my silliness after a point and broke out laughing one day.  I said, y'know what?  This is stupid.  If I have cancer, I have cancer, and moping about it isn't going to help.  If I don't, I don't, and moping about it isn't going to help.  I find out what's what, and then I deal.  Just like I deal with everything else.

A few days ago, I woke up and felt good for the first time in, well, at least half a year.  Actually good.  Anyone who has been sick for a long time knows that there comes a point where you wonder if you'll ever feel healthy again or if your life will continue to be one illness after another.  I actually felt good, and my spirits rose a lot.  I started exercising again, doing a lot of walking, building up my strength.  I still had some of the other symptoms, but wounds were healing again, so it gave me a modicum of hope that maybe just maybe I didn't actually have cancer.  Part of me said that was most likely wishful thinking, but that was okay.  I would keep that hope as long as possible.

So.  Today was the big day for the biopsy.  No illnesses lingered, no cuts I could point to and say, "Yeah, that's been there for six months now."  Everything had pretty well healed up.  What an excellent excuse to cancel, right?  I'll spare you how many times I thought about doing just that, of being too late for my appointment, of throwing a fit in the waiting room and storming out for no reason... ANYTHING.  But I did it.  I went. 

The doctor, a wonderful and obviously skilled surgeon, did an awesome job.  I barely felt anything.  I did wonder what the little jar of Grey Poupon looking stuff was doing on the counter, but I didn't ask.  Figured there are some arcane things in medicine that are not for mere mortals to know.

Anyway, long story not quite as long, he said that in 30 years of practice, he'd seen a lot, and he was virtually certain it wasn't cancer.  He did a once-over like the other doctor did and said nothing else seemed to be wrong, either.  I told him about the illnesses and the wounds that didn't heal, and he said that if my immune system was overloaded fighting something, that would explain it.  But the good news is, apparently, my immune system won.  Little white cells dressed in Spartan capes apparently kicked some serious ass in there, which is why I suddenly started feeling so much better.  The platelets at Plataea or something.  Who knows?

He also told me that even if the biopsy came back less than optimal, which he highly doubted, the options for treatment at this stage would be trivial and would not have any impact on any part of my life or lifestyle.  No radiation, no chemo, no cutting, chopping, dicing or making julienne fries, which means I could still have more kids if I want, and I can still have the kind of life I want.  AWESOME.

So why did I say all this?  Why did I put you through this Steel Magnolias nonsense?  Because obviously I got to go through a revelation that hopefully only a few people ever have to go through.  Death is very real, and it comes for all of us, even those of us who live an extremely healthy lifestyle.  I got to see a bullet with my name on it.  It's not a happy thing at all.  More unhappy still, it's a horror to understand that surviving can be worse than death and to know that there may come a point where you wish for death.

I was ready to die.  No drama, no great wailing or gnashing of teeth.  No tragedienne suicidal bullshit with suicide notes left strategically where someone would find them and such.  This was a pragmatic decision based on protecting my quality of life and that of my son.  The only thing that bothered me was that I would have to make sure he not have any connection to it or (more important still) that he not be the one to find me when it was over.  That was dodgy since suicide is illegal in most states.  Wouldn't it be ironic if the penalty was death?  REPEAT EARLIER POLITICAL MESSAGE.

But now, knowing that I am not going to die, at least, not from that particular bullet, it's important to be just as ready to live. 

And that I am.  Most assuredly, in all my ridiculously healthy glory. 

Libertarians, see you in Vegas.

 

First of all, I want to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving holiday.  I won't belabor the image of pilgrims and Native Americans all standing around a cornucopia...  That's been "done to death by sland'rous tongues" already, I'm afraid.

No, my message is different this year.  I know, jump back hehe.

Almost every Thanksgiving when my son and I go to visit relatives or have friends over, they can't help but ask how an atheist can celebrate Thanksgiving, which they see as being thankful to one god or another.  "I mean, who are you thanking?" they always ask.  Sometimes they're being snide, but usually they're sincere, so I'll answer that question here.

I'm thankful to the founders of this great nation for having the foresight to create a government that is as free from oppression as any this world has ever seen, a government that, in spite of many people who would rather not, allows me the freedom to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah and even Talk Like a Pirate Day in spite of my being an atheist.

I'm thankful to those who serve in our armed forces who, for better or worse, are fighting overseas to protect those freedoms for all of us, atheist and theist alike, whether I agree with the decisions behind their deployments or not.

I am thankful to those people in my life who have contributed to my and my son's happiness and well being over the last year.  I'm thankful that they were patient with my weaknesses and supportive of my strengths.  I'm thankful that they chose to share another year of friendship and fellowship with me and with my family.

Thanksgiving for me is much like it is for you.  Sure, it's an opportunity to watch my fantasy football team completely own whoever I'm playing this week hehe.  It's a great time to overeat, to stuff more than one turkey at the table, so to speak.  But it's also a time to be thankful for the good things in our lives and for the strength and support to deal with things that are less than ideal.  The only difference lies in who we choose to thank.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This is a repost of something I wrote elsewhere that I wanted to pass along here, too.  I know not everyone who reads my blog is a Libertarian, so disregard that part.

I imagine most of the people on this board are, like me, Libertarians, whether registered with the party and actively promoting a candidate or just shaking their heads in disgust at how far our government has drifted from the Constitution.

I've had people tell me I should go ahead and vote for the "lesser of two evils" or, as one might say, the "lesser of two weevils," from the major parties since that's the only way I will vote for a "winner." Huh? In that case, I'd be voting against the loser, not for the winner.

That's not making my voice heard. That's horserace voting, bandwagon voting -- that's the "I want to have the winner's bumper sticker on my car, and I want to be able to thump my chest and say, yeah, I voted for the winner" mentality, and that's not what voting is supposed to be about.

Everyone says a Libertarian candidate can't possibly be elected, especially not actually running as a Libertarian. I disagree strongly on that point. I think that we have a bunch of Libertarians who are choosing between the weevils instead of backing Libertarian candidates because they're engaging in this horserace voting.

Sure, we want to win. We want to put an unapologetic Libertarian (not a frankly GOP candidate dressed up as a Libertarian) in the White House, right? But even if we don't win the election, as long as our voters speak, we win because that's that many votes that don't go to the weevils. That's that many votes shy of a weevil mandate.

If Libertarians who really do want a Libertarian in the White House, whether now or eventually, vote Libertarian, we will make our voices heard. And we will also inspire other Libertarians to leave the weevils and come vote their consciences.

*Shrug* for what that's worth. Cheers.

Everyone remembers September 11, 2001, but I think it's important to remember September 12, 2001 as well.  That was the day we Americans picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and raised a defiant middle finger toward those who had killed non-combatants from many nations, on our own soil. 

While a lot of Americans huddled in fear and wondered where the next attack would fall and whether we were safe and what was going to happen, some others went to the local recruiting office and signed up to join the forces that would take on those who had attacked us, whoever that would turn out to be.

These men and women went that day to take their oaths to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.  They weren't signing up as many people do in peacetime for some career training and the GI bill, no, these people knew they were going to war.  Like the heroic firefighters and police in New York who ran into the collapsing towers, these men and women were running into a maelstrom that most people would have chosen to run away from.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.  A lot of disillusionment, a lot of allegations of mismanagement, of misuse of our military, even of war crimes and atrocity.  Even worse, a lot of evil legislation has passed through the hands of our elected representatives in a misguided attempt to sell us false security at the price of our freedom and cripple the Bill of Rights.  And as a result, a lot of people have forgotten what they felt September 12.  A lot of misguided people have taken to calling these brave men and women "baby killers" and spitting on them and insulting them, vandalizing their property and so on just like the idiots who attacked our soldiers who returned from Vietnam.  Same wrong reasons for the same wrong actions.

A lot of my blogs harp on the notion that we should not blame the soldiers for the decisions of the administration, and by golly I'll harp on that one more time.  The soldiers do not get to cherry pick their assignments, contrary to what Lt. Watada might wish, and they go where they're sent.  Once there, it's their job to execute their legal orders to the best of their ability and within the rules of engagement, which the vast majority of them do. 

They had the courage in the aftermath of the world trade center attack to join the military and take up arms against an enemy that hit us where we lived and make of themselves targets over in Hell's Outhouse so we could go to our shopping malls and our sports arenas with a relative hope of safety against IEDs... To attack them for that is craven and low, the mark of a mindless political lemming with no integrity, intellectual or otherwise.  For more on this, see my blog on pacifism.

I'm not asking you to support the war in Iraq -- I could not ask someone to support a war I myself do not and did not support.  But I am asking that you support our SOLDIERS, the human beings, the men and women who went in good faith under orders from their commander-in-chief, in what they believed was a legal and just war.  Support their safety and support their successful completion of the mission which will bring them swiftly home.

If you don't feel like supporting the war in Afghanistan, well, that's your own prerogative, though I would disagree with you.  But again, I would ask that regardless of how you feel about the war itself or war as a concept, that you recognize the sacrifices made by these soldiers and the courage and trust they showed in America when they signed up to defend her.

And stop your government from stripping away your freedoms bit by bit.

Show them that what they're defending is still here and still worth defending.

I can't believe it.  I mean, I know it's true.  I've been here the whole time, right?  It's not a surprise to me.  But I still can't believe it.  I know, everybody says that, but...  holy smokes 

That can't be right.  As of tomorrow, September 8, Sean/Jericho, my baby boy, in the eyes of the law will be a grown man, legally responsible for himself, subject to selective service and no longer under my protection.  Forgive me if I feel the need to sit down...

Y'know, I knew this day would come, intellectually.  I remember when they put  that little guy into my arms the first time, and I was almost overwhelmed with that weight of absolutely responsibility for another human being... and even then, I knew this day would come.

That first night, as this tiny person, all 7 lbs 3 oz of him, and I both tried to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing and get to know each other, I made a few promises to him and to myself, promises I've worked to keep.

I promised him that whoever he loved in his life, I would love and accept into our family without reservation.  I could not help but love someone who gave him joy, no matter what gender, what race, what religion, what background.  So far, this one has been easy.  The women in his life have all been very special and wonderful in their own ways.

I promised him I would do everything I could as an adult while he was still a child to safeguard his choices and his freedoms and make the world the best it could be for him and for his children. 

I promised him that I would do my best to prepare him, not for the world he was born into but for whatever the world might be in his adulthood, something that was no more clear then than it is now.  I would not raise him to be a perfect child, but I would raise him to be the best adult he could be, prepared for any eventuality.  I suppose I'd seen too many Terminator movies... 

I know I've made some mistakes, too, no matter how well intentioned.  There were the things I should have done that I didn't, the things I shouldn't have done that I did, and of course the things I didn't do soon enough.  For some of those things, though he has forgiven me already and holds me blameless, I can never forgive myself.

But when I look at him now, I see so many memories, so many things all superimposed... I see his strapping 6'4 frame and the five o'clock shadow on his chin, but I also see that newborn  in my arms.  I see the tiny Samurai in armor I made for him offering me a handful of Hallowe'en candy.  I see the toothless triumphant grin of a little boy at his orange belt test and the terrified eleven year old disappearing behind the curtain for his first audition. I see the tears of pain and betrayal when a costar in a play betrayed him onstage and his steadfast refusal to be break the scene in spite of it.  I see the heroin addicted HIV-positive prostitute he played in Corpus Christi and the angry teenager attacking his abusive father in Fuddy Meers. 

In the trained, dark tones of his baritone voice, I still hear his first cry and the indignant shriek from the backseat of the car after the accident that told me that my baby was alive.  I hear the boyish timbres of his Claudio before he kissed Hero onstage and his trademark impression of Sean Connery.

He has grown up whether because of me or in spite of me to be someone that, even were I not his mother, I would be proud to call my best friend.  I'm even more proud to call him my son.

Happy birthday, Sean-bear.  I love you.