A quick thought...

Everything seems to be working out for me today...I keep wondering if I'm going to die or something....if so, IT WAS ALL WORTH IT! ha ha :)

(Seriously though, I'm having a great day. I hope everyone else gets one of these.)

Bach and the floor piano from Big join forces

This is awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhAiDiHYP9k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boingboing.net%2F&feature=player_embedded

It makes my childhood go, "Yay!"

Being a judge ties your hands

Forget all those "activist judges" - as if a judge has a real ability to make laws (nope, that's the legislation) or to even request that certain cases come to them (that's the will of the people/law enforcement), Californians are ready to hang the judges on the California Supreme Court for upholding Proposition 8. It's convenient to make the justices into the bad guys; after all, they didn't find for what was right (in my and many others points of view), they found for the procedure of the law. And as much as I dislike it, I have to agree.
52% of Californians voted for Proposition 8, and made it into law. Granted, it was an extremely well-placed blow, coming with the Presidential election that was guaranteed to motivate the traditionally-undervoting segments of society who also just so happen to represent the majority of the church-going, Bible-as-law conservatives. Three steps forward, two steps back. Had a marriage equality amendment been in any other election, it would have passed. Seriously - the people who vote in non-presidential elections are usually those with a dog in the fight, and I believe California is liberal enough to make that happen. Problem is that it can't be made into a religious choice, it must be a moral one - if Joe Voter walks into a booth and reads "Marriage Equality," he's going to vote yes. It makes him seem like a good guy - equality and all that jazz. Now, with that same scenario, after his church and the media and everyone else has said "This is against God" he's not going to vote against God, after all. Hence, Proposition 8 was passed.
Now if I understand it correctly, the challenge made on Proposition 8 was that the legislature should have had to approve it first. The court could not find that this was so without destroying the way the California Constitution functions.
That being said, why the hell didn't they pick a better argument? Get this - this is the next challenge:

Prominent lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court on behalf of two gay men and two gay women, arguing that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process.

Olson said he hopes the case, which seeks a preliminary injunction against the measure until the case is resolved, will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a former U.S. solicitor general who served in high-level Justice Department jobs in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

Jesus, couldn't they have done this from the beginning? Or were they too afraid of Republicans to want to throw the Equal Rights into the mix? God, I'm really beginning to disrespect liberals. They claim to want equality, but in reality they're too afraid of losing what they have to fight for the issues they claim to stand for. Instead they play watchdog over nomenclature and inane policy (I would put a citation in here, but I was overwhelmed when I looked for the thread...)

Don't get me wrong - I'm a filthy non-activist liberal preaching on my blog about the things that I think are right. But I'm going to law school in the fall for civil policy. I think I'm in a unique position to be able to do something once I understand the rules of the game. How many other lawyers were on free lunch, were a minority in their high school, put themselves through college (with the help of Uncle Sam)? I'd go on but it just seems like tooting my own horn...the point is that I still want to make a difference, and I'm gullible enough to believe I can be a hero in my own way.

Cycles

Do things really move in cycles? The seasons come and go because we're in orbit around a sun, but is anything else really cyclical? Or do we just organize our lives in that way because it seems to make sense given our environment?

John Donne

I've been on a John Donne kick, you know, in between fighting with my school and trying not to drive myself crazy, and the guy is really pretty interesting. He was derided by Ben Johnson for not keeping to meter, but I tend to really like his writing. He thinks about a lot of the same stuff that I do.

There's a good site to read his work: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebib.htm

This is a particularly good one that I hadn't heard of:

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

Hip to be Angry (lots of swearing)

As a sociologist, I read a lot of blogs about...well, society. Not glamour pages or Hollywood - I read about race relations, cultures, and a lot of news. More and more I see the label "white" pasted across anything racist. Now hear me out - there is a lot of institutionalized racism. A ton. If you ever want visible proof, look at a map overlay of Southern California comparing race vs. income. There is no if, and, or but about it; blacks were put into ghettos and kept there by unfair housing, discriminatory wages, and hostile environments. The same seems to be true for Hispanics (I haven't studied it - sorry). That being said, I would also like to point out, you know - to the internet in general, that NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RICH. If you haven't noticed, yes, the Power Elite (as my beloved sociology professor likes to refer to them as) is mostly made up of white men. Again, not a coincidence. However, that does not make every single white person alive responsible for the system of racism put into place. As always, money talks. If you don't have money, guess what? You're everybody's dog. Irish, Italians, Polish, Persians, Jews... all screwed by the system. All considered white by Census standards.

I read on another blog that all white people... you know what, here...here's the quote that set me off:

Most white people are quick to agree that "we're all human." But they rarely see how, deep inside themselves, they actually consider people who are supposedly different from themselves, in large part because of their skin color, as less than human. As less than fully deserving of fundamental "human rights."

(source: http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-white-lives-more-than-non-white.html)

I wish there was a Chris Rock sketch for white people that does the same thing that his Black people vs. N*** did. Yeah, I don't use the word, and I don't get much titillation out of him using it. But he makes a good point - there should be a way to separate yourself from the stupid shit that people in your color do. Someone on your baseball team does something morally repugnant - you can quit the team. You can switch political parties if they violate your beliefs. You can't quit your skin color. So why the hell should it even be used as a judge?

At the core of it, when I read things like this and am as outraged as the next person (non-white person, according to the magazine article because whites totally don't think that human values are for everyone and hence wouldn't feel outraged) I feel betrayed. I feel like telling them - "You fuckheads! You screw up everything! Just when I feel like my race isn't a mark against me you assholes go and do something to make everyone who's watching roll their eyes and go, "Uh huh, whitey. This equality thing is all a lie and you know it." FUUUUUUUCK!!!

I just want to point out again that race is a bill of goods sold to the underpriviledged to keep them contesting amongst themselves instead of with the people who make the rules - the Power Elite. It's the magician's sleight of hand, watch while I conceal billions of dollars in bailout money and corporate kickbacks - look, illegal immigrants are taking your shitty less-than-minimum-wage jobs!! Outrage! Scorn! Guess what? He didn't take your job - the man in charge of the corporations decided to pay less so that you couldn't live on that wage because he knows he can screw over the immigrant with no legal recourse. Face it, the Power Elite are the ones who decide the policy, not you, not anyone else. After all, did you get to vote on that bank bailout? Fuck no - the ones in charge said it's for the best and we shrugged and said okay. Meanwhile, you'll swallow the bullshit they pass down to you that black men are more likely to be violent, illegal immigrants take up all the welfare, and whites are involved in a system to keep everyone down.

It's ignorance, not skin color that decides this. Look around you - we're all screwed the same way. We're all just trying to get by. That white person you see on the street where you live isn't puppeting the system because those kind of white people live in gated communities, put their children in private school, and wouldn't walk in your neighborhood because it makes them nervous. That white person is stuck the same as you, bitter the same as you, and you both probably hang out together and watch the game. If not, you should - the Dodgers are having a hell of a season.

Wolverine

Oh man...can't begin to tell you how many ways not to expect good things from the new Wolverine movie. It has it all: wooden dialogue, stating the obvious, all the good "normal" people in the movie dying just to give Wolverine a chance to feel anguish. It's like the entire movie was written to make Wolverine into The Woobie (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWoobie) Other than that, I think Sabretooth was a little better characterized than in the movies and Gambit was a complete waste. All in all - don't go see it.