Blog? What blog?

Oops, looks like the blog has been getting cold just sitting there like that. I better pick it up and sprinkle a little fairy dust on it, er sumpthin.

So what the heck is going on... Hmmm... let's see...

Work - pretty good. We are on the way to meeting our sales goal for the year and our new product development project is going far better than the last one. That's not to say that it is world-class, just an improvement. Lots of room for more improvement - that's my job.

Plays... Yeah - we do those. Sharon and I were asked to help crew Once Upon A Mattress which was truly a LOT OF FUN. I never thought that there would be so many kids with so many phones texting each other all through the show.

It was also fun to see Gail, a good friend of mine from high school who shares my birthday. I can't remember which of us is a few hours older than the other. Her daughter (who looks just like she did when she was in high school) played the Minstrel and was in my opinion the most talented singer of the cast. Gail was there at one of the first performances and saw my name in the program and wondered to herself "Is this the real deal?!" (this is what she said she thought). It was nice to see someone that I haven't seen in 30 years and have them remember me so fondly.

Then, there's Dickens Fair. Wow. We are lots more organized this year in both of the casts that I am in. We've held productive rehearsals (shocking, I know) and I feel very good about our theatrical readiness. Costumes are all in place and all I really need is a new hat box. For that I already have the foam core, I just need to make it.

Rehearsal last night for the NFP show went until 1:15 AM. I was kinda tired after that. I dragged into work about an hour and a half later than usual and about 3PM my brain went into power-saver mode.

Tomorrow is shaping up to be an all-relatives day with all of us going to my Uncle PJ's house for a small family gathering of about 35 people. Remember to bring camera...

And the new roof looks pretty good. It was simply amazing to see how fast ten people can remove a roof.

Too busy to sleep

So I got a call from a friend asking if I could help out on stage crew for a musical. Once Upon A Mattress. Done at my high school.

How could I say no.

So it overlaps a tiny amount with Dickens Fair workshops and stuff. But we can work around that. And besides, it's a really fun show.

I just don't have enough time for sleeping.

Shock Treatment

Obama wins. Best news I've heard in a long time. FINALLY we can begin to recover from the unspeakable damage that has been done to our country, our liberties, and our dignity as a people by the likes of George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. Someday, now I believe we can begin to overcome the "War on Terror" that has perverted our nation, wrecked our standing as a nation of liberty and justice, and has ushered in the abrogation of our civil rights in the name of "security".

That said, I am deeply ashamed that California has apparently voted by a 3 to 4% margin to ELIMINATE the legally gained civil rights of a protected minority. The fight to eliminate these rights was fought with dastardly lies and distortions, by a majority group, to enshrine their religiously based discriminatory view on the minority in the constitution - expressly to avoid judicial and legislative control. I am disgusted by the lies, the fear mongering, and the lawbreaking that was resorted to in order to perpetrate this act of cowardice and bigotry.

And to hear "them" tell about it - they were saving the rest of us from ourselves. They opined that if gays were allowed to marry that children would be targeted by gays, that somebody would find a way to argue that animals were now suitable spouses, and that - best of all - it was a SIN against nature to call a homosexual union "marriage".

I've spent the whole last 24 hours grieving over this.

To everyone, all 5.something million or so, who voted to eliminate the right of gays to marry - You all entirely misunderstand what it means to have ACTUAL FAITH in your fellow Californians to be responsible human beings. Your behavior is an apostasy to our constitutional democracy. To the perpetrators of this grotesque obscenity of democratic gang rape, FUCK YOU, you bigoted scum. Yes, I mean you - the Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus, the Mormon Church, and all of the organizations the told the lies, broke the laws, and fanned the flames of homophobia to prevent the "Armageddon" that you described as the failure of proposition 8.

Gay people are not going away. Ever. And since they aren't, and they fall in love just like everyone else, and because they are going to want to form permanent relationships to share their lives with another, just like everyone else, we as a society owe them the same respect and stature in these relationships that everyone else enjoys. Doing so benefits us all, and makes us all stronger as a society of contented families.

I have NO fear that these relationships will harm anyone, nor do I fear that honoring these relationships will in any way diminish the relationships of anyone else.

86%

There is a terrific video about families and children that will be negatively affected by California Proposition 8 if it were to pass.

I found it here in a very well written blog post.

What message are we sending to the 52,000 children in California being raised by gay or lesbian parents? If proposition 8 passes, the message is that their parents are not as good as other parents - because of their parents' sexuality.

Only 14% of families fit the "perfect" definition. What about the rest?

If a majority vote can take away rights to dignity and respect for a class of people, no rights we have are safe. Vote NO ON Proposition 8.

FURY

As I drove home, all peaceful and stuff looking forward to Halloween... I spied them on the corner... PROP 8 supporters - with signs waving - saying lies like:
Prop 8 = religious freedom
Prop 8 = free speech

I was so incensed that I took the dog on a walk to go and talk to the peppy liars.

One of them insisted that her husband who teaches at Carlmont high school was REQUIRED to teach that mommies and daddies were no longer required, that gay marriage sent a message that children don't need a mommy, and that her husband NEEDED that job to support their five children.

The others calmly tried to get me to believe that somehow, civil unions were EQUAL to marriage, and that people being denied normal family rights was a thing of the past!

I am deeply afraid that will all the lies, all the money from outside the state, and with all the smokescreen about "saving marriage" by denying it to a class of "unworthy" people, that PROPOSITION 8 MAY PASS.

If the proposition 8 forces win, they will win by two means - convincing neutral voters that proposition 8 will ensure religious freedom and free speech (and other LIES), and through the failure to vote on the part of people who are only weakly committed to the defeat of prop 8.

Polls are showing that Obama and Biden are likely to win California by 22 percentage points 55-33. If this handsome lead causes lots of voters with common cause to fail to vote, WE COULD LOSE. www.mercurynews.com/localnew..._10849251

So FOCUS people - find the people in the middle, the ones that can go either way on prop 8, and make sure they understand the lies they are being fed are FALSE. Proposition 8 says NOTHING about free speech, and NOTHING about religious freedom.

The free speech religious freedom angle is that somehow, because the state recognizes that its adult citizens are not all heterosexual and the state fulfills its legal obligation not to discriminate against several hundred thousand of its citizens, that churches will (somehow) be prevented, by law, from opposing homosexuality or homosexual marriage. Bullshit. Since when are churches sanctioned for taking moral positions?

Find the people who are so confident that Obama will win that their vote "doesn't matter". Remind them that it indeed DOES matter and it is their civic duty to participate in the democratic process and VOTE. Remind them that proposition 8 could win or lose by ONE VOTE - THEIR VOTE. Ask them on election day whether they voted yet - if they haven't give them a helping hand.

WEDNESDAY WILL BE TOO LATE.

Do YOU matter?

Or more accurately, does your vote matter in this election? If you are like me, you don't support the GOP, nor do you agree with their platform on Gay Marriage. But maybe you don't think that your vote matters since McCain and Palin trail in the California polls and that Prop 8, the proposition to constitutionally ban gay marriage in California, is also "losing" in the polls.
online.wsj.com/article/SB...661835.html

Don't let complacency keep you from voting. ONE VOTE - maybe yours, could decide Prop 8. That's right, a simple majority writes good old fashioned separate but equal discrimination into the state constitution. Turnout is key. From the article:

"...the measure's fate likely will depend on turnout among Republicans – who favor Proposition 8 – and Democrats – who oppose it. "This is a case where partisan turnout will make a big difference".

Tell your friends, and your co-workers if you can. Here are some points to make:
Regardless of how you feel about same-sex marriage, itʼs wrong to treat people differently under the law.

Separate is not equal. Domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage.

State and federal laws have hundreds (if not thousands) of references to marriage, not civil unions, regarding inheritance, property ownership, health care decisions, etc., that are pretty much taken for granted. It's not the same for civil unions.

Fiction vs. Fact: rebuts the scare tactics used in the yes on 8 ads. www.noonprop8.com/about/fact-vs-fiction

Tell them the story of any same-sex couples you know. Make it personal. That's very compelling.

Ask: Have the many hundreds of marriages performed so far affected YOUR marriage?


VOTE

Life During Wartime

Sometimes I feel a bit under siege. There is the ever present War On [specified evil] and "we the people" AKA The Government of The United States seem to be at "war" with a lot of stuff.

War on Drugs - great big success so far. Almost nobody takes drugs and the harsh penalties have essentially prevented any further "drug crimes" through deterrence. Yeah, right. More like billions of dollars wasted trying to prevent people from getting high. The prohibition drives up the street price of the illicit goods to the maximum that will be borne by the users, and almost all of that money is spent on other, more harmful illegal activities. Meanwhile, we have one in 100 citizens behind bars, and one in NINE are black men. About half of these people are non-violent offenders, many of them incarcerated for drugs. We spend about 55 BILLION dollars a year on prisons. Nice work. Think this will change any time soon? Me neither.

War on "piracy". It used to be the case that copyright lasted for 14 years, with one 14 year renewal. Period.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" was the first stated purpose of U.S. copyright. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1788 proposed to do that "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The first U.S. copyright law, passed in 1790, protected books, maps, and charts if they were created by residents or citizens of the United States. The term of their exclusive right was a mere 14 years, with the right of renewal for 14 more.

Now Big MEdia interests have perverted this into essentially PERMANENT OWNERSHIP rights (life of the original author plus 70 - 90 years) and have waged a years long war against their potential (and actual) customers to get them to PAY UP and pay restitution for their crimes of piracy and theft of property. Then they got lawmakers to take away rights from the public to unconstitutionally enrich private individuals. That's fucked up.

In my view, if it was created more than 28 years ago - it should be public domain. Period. Content creators, if they want to make a living, should continue to create valuable things and sell them under copyright. I certainly don't continue to get paid for work I did more than 28 years ago. Do you?

War on Terror
No end in sight for this one, thanks to Bush and Company's work. We'll continue to have invasive body and bag screening by low IQ TSA goons FOREVER as far as I can tell. It makes me ill how much effort is wasted and how much fear is generated by this one insane reaction. JUST LOCK THE DAMN COCKPIT like a timed safe. (Actually, I think it would be better if we were to place a bulkhead there instead of a door and make the cockpit accessible only from OUTSIDE the plane.) If some suicide bomber blows up a plane with explosives hidden in the bottle of the baby he is strolling aboard, that will be a huge tragedy but it will still be only a fraction of the 576 people killed that week in car crashes. Spend the rest of the money finding and killing actual terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they are hiding.

Don't even get me started on all the domestic surveillance crap. (We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that aint allowed.)