I've always wondered about this

 

(I usually go with the second one :) )

More BS here in Colorado

Yesterday it was an article in the Boulder Daily Camera...in the grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal, just some shoddy reporting.

Today, we have a state senator making lunatic statements on the floor of the senate regarding a bill that would extend insurance coverage to domestic partners who work for the state. Here's the audio:



I have a couple of things to say about this:

1. This asshole represents the district (Greeley) in which Angie Zapata lived and was murdered for being trans. It puts his quote from Leviticus about how homosexuals should be put to death into perspective.

2. He claims to represent the will of Colorado voters in his dissent, citing the passage of a marriage ban two years ago. He's a lawmaker, so I'd think he knows better but passing a law saying that marriage is only between one man and one woman does not mean that voters think that LGBT people should not have any rights - just not THAT particular one they voted on.

2.1 Further, isn't the argument of the religious right against gay marriage that "marriage" is sacred and should be protected from being redefined by the homos and their supporters? When we're in the middle of those fights, they always say that it's not about civil rights and that they'd be fine with something less like civil unions or domestic partnerships. Then, when the law passes, they use that vote as an argument against anything resembling civil unions or domestic partnerships. Hell, even just extending employer benefits to unmarried partners, gay or straight.

I'm so fucking sick of hearing our elected representatives use religion as the basis of their arguments. They want to bleat on and on about how their free speech rights as bigoted pricks are in danger from the left while at the same time ignoring the part of the first amendment related to the separation of church and state.

I guess you need to be selective in your reading if you're going to stand on the senate floor in mixed-fiber clothes with a shaved face - both prohibited in Leviticus - and argue for strict adherence to the same passage, but only this part that supports your homophobia.

Underwear

I happened to come across a news story from a neighboring city titled "Police: Army deserter — wearing thong — arrested in Boulder".

It's a pretty standard story about some guy who allegedly deserted the Army and the police caught him after receiving a tip. But then there's this:

In a strange twist, he was found wearing a woman’s thong and had three pairs of women’s underpants stuffed in his shirt pocket.

Ok...since when is the underwear someone is wearing newsworthy? Oh, that's right - it was a man wearing women's underwear. So if a woman was arrested and she happened to be wearing men's boxers at the time, we'd be hearing about that in a headline too? And it would also be linked off of The Drudge Report?

Along the same lines, how about this part:

Jail staff found three pairs of panties in Mauger’s shirt pocket and said he was wearing a woman’s thong underneath his boxers. He refused to tell jail staff where the undergarments had come from and why he had them, police said.

Again, why was his underwear (or the extra pairs he had on him at the time of his arrest) an issue that jail staff felt they had to question him about?

I'm not sure what bugs me more with this sort of reporting: the sexist double standard, or the addition of unrelated information like the recent story about the woman who was found guilty of murdering her husband...and also happened to be a transsexual.

A fresh browser

I have this really bad habit of always clicking the "restore previous session" button every time I start Firefox. I typically have five or six different tabs open and a couple of those are things that I'm planning on getting to when I have more time or some cool thing I found online that I want to buy when I have money. Over time, those tabs turn into three or four and pretty soon I start worrying about when my browser's going to crash from lack of memory.

Every once in a while things get bad enough that when the browser does crash, it freezes up when trying to reload all those tabs. It hasn't happened to me in a while but finally did tonight. Usually it kind of bums me out because I feel like I've lost a connection to something interesting. Tonight though, it actually feels really good. I have a fresh new browser with nothing waiting for my attention. It's amazing how even virtual clutter can drag you down sometimes.

The video Facebook doesn't want you to see

In case you haven't seen this yet - what Facebook-type interaction might be like in real life:



This video has supposedly been removed from people's Facebook accounts for TOS violations or something.

No rest for the weary

I was looking forward to a fairly mellow week this week after all of the craziness of flooding and moving the past couple. Things were going good until Wednesday, when we found out that we (the company I work for) needed to be in the Philippines on Monday for yet another demo of the new system we're trying to sell them.

This news came out of the blue - we weren't planning on having to demo anything for at least another month. Needless to say, we had a ton of work to get done in a very short amount of time so my leisure week ended up turning into working until at least midnight the past couple of nights and pretty late tonight. Oh well, at least I have a job, right?

In some of my down time today, I came across this comic from xkcd which succinctly sums up a lot of what privilege is all about:

Time to go watch tonight's Battlestar Galactica. It seems like no one else is into this show but I have to say that the past two episodes have been some of the best television I've ever seen. All of you are really missing out.

I'm back

I think I already used that title before, but whatever.

I finally finished moving on Sunday and am officially done with that shit-hole apartment for good. Well, they still need to send me my security deposit...I hope there's no BS with that.

One side effect of the move is that I was without my home computer for the past week. I moved into the new place a week ago, but my computer and desk were still at the apartment since we ran out of time last Sunday with the trailer I rented. I do have a laptop, but I didn't really use it since I pretty much hate laptops in general.

I've been meaning to cut down on my internet time for a while and thought it would be a good experiment to go without for a week. Ok, going without isn't really accurate - I could still do some limited surfing at work and I have an iphone. But I honestly felt like a junky in withdrawal the first couple of days without the trusty desktop.

I'm not sure how long it will last, but my first two days with a functional PC in the house are going well. I've reduced my online time quite a bit and don't feel compelled to sit in front of my computer for hours on end when I get home anymore.

It's all a matter of priority now and I plan on keeping this blog near the top of that list, so regular posts should be on their way again. :)