Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
“Friday Cat Blogging” is a well-known, oft-derided, but much loved cliché in the weblogging community. However, for those of us that don’t have cats, while we might enjoy looking at everyone else’s, we sometimes end up feeling a bit left out.
However.
I may not have a cat…
…but I do have a Tribble!
And so begins “Friday Tribble Blogging!”
Isn’t he cute? :) He’s nestled up on my bed right now, napping on my pillows. They look so innocent when they’re asleep….
First, the good news (and, for once, this is good news): federal legislation is being introduced that will protect a woman’s ability to get birth control.
Reports of pharmacists with particular religious and moral beliefs denying prescriptions for birth control have prompted legislation that would ensure all prescriptions are filled.
House and Senate backers unveiled a bill dubbed the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act (ALPhA) on Thursday.
It would allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription only if the prescription can be passed to and filled by a co-worker at the same pharmacy.
[…]
“What have we come to in this country?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat and House sponsor of the bill, said Thursday morning at a rally on Capitol Hill. “We are merely saying, ‘let the laws in this country stand.’ Let a woman be treated with dignity. When she has a prescription from her doctor, that privacy should be respected.”
The bad news comes later on in the article, with someone applying the same ridiculous extrapolations that lead anti-gay-marriage bigots to claim that eventually we’ll be marrying our pets and children.
[Karen] Brauer told Reuters she believes doctors will eventually begin ordering women to abort disabled children, or refuse to treat them after birth.
“They’ll force women to kill their children … It will be like China. It’s the next logical step,” she told Reuters.
It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me that there are people out there who think like this — who actually believe this crap.
“Hurdy Gurdy Man, The” by Butthole Surfers from the album Hurdy Gurdy Man, The (1990, 4:01).
If you’re as much of a glutton for punishment as I obviously am, get your tickets here. I’ll be at the 10:30pm show at the Cinerama on Thursday, May 19th.
“A Hive of Villainy” by London Symphony Orchestra, The/Williams, John from the album Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology (1977, 2:14).
Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m certainly disappointed that Oregon has nullified the same-sex marriages performed last year. It’s frustrating enough to see it happen from the standpoint of someone’s who’s very much in favor of true equal rights for all — but even more so when this decision affects a friend of mine.
This is only the first day and already I have run into problems. I had an appointment with an attorney this afternoon and the first question asked? Martial status? Single. He looks down at the gold wedding band still (and forever) on my finger. Widower? Nope. Divorced? Nope. He’s trying real hard to pretend he doesn’t see the ring but he does and its giving him fits. Ha-ha he nervously laughs, that ring looks a lot like a wedding band. It IS a wedding band. Now he’s lost so he starts again. Martial status? Still single, I haven’t gotten married in the last five minutes. Finally at a loss he just accepts I’m single and moves on to the next round of questions.
Yesterday it would have been so much easier. Martial status? Married. See how easy that was.
So now what?
“Big Ditch” by DJ Icey from the album Urbal Beats Vol. 1 (1996, 3:49).
By the way, that little George Carlin moment in my previous post comes from one of my favorite of his routines from his ‘Jammin’ in New York‘ album, where he skewers the convoluted and bizarre language used by the airline industry.
One thing I have to say I really like about living in Seattle — it’s part of the Lower 48. I’ve got forty-eight states I can get to within a few days without ever having to set foot on an airplane (49, if I make the time to drive the Al-Can).
I’ve mentioned before that I seem to have developed something of a fear of flying ever since a particularly turbulent flight into Anchorage a few years back. It’s not entirely rational, but then, rationality doesn’t really seem to enter into it when I’m trapped in a multi-ton metal tube a few thousand feet in the air that’s shaking me around like one of James Bond’s martinis.
So then, what do I in my infinite wisdom do? I go and read articles about what happens during explosive decompression (“ROOF FLIES OFF!”).
A blown-out door can be perilous for pressurized aircraft at high altitudes. In 1989, the lower cargo door on a United Airlines passenger jet became unlatched at about 23,000 feet. The sudden and explosive loss of pressure tore open a portion of the cabin—nine passengers were sucked out through the large hole, along with their seats and the floor around them.
The year before, a Boeing 737 operated by Aloha Airlines experienced an “explosive decompression” at 24,000 feet. An 18-foot portion of the roof of the cabin ripped off, and a flight attendant standing in the aisle was ejected from the plane.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
I need to go find a happy place now.
“Mutilate” by Front 242 from the album 06:21:03:11 Up Evil (1993, 4:10).
Rush Limbaugh yesterday, via Atrios:
LIMBAUGH: When does he start up this stupid little network? August? Yip yip yip yahoo. You know what Gore said about this? It’s going to be liberal. It’s going to reflect the point of view of young people.
What the hell is that, Al? What the hell is the point of view of young people? Blow jobs, that’s what they’re doing out there. They’re out there getting oral sex all day long, that’s what they’re talking about. That’s the point of view they can’t wait that your boss,
Al made sure that’s become the number one sport in high school today. So, I guess you’re going to have a BJ network out there, Al, is that what you’re going to do? You’re going to call your network the oral sex channel out there, start competing with MTV?
No, it’s not going to have any of this stuff out there, folks, it’s going to be talking about liberalism, no, no, no, that’s not what we’re about. Classic cannot even admit who he is.
(Anyone wanna bet on whether he gets slapped with a fine for violating broadcast decency standards…or for that matter, English grammar standards [oh, if only we could fine people for that particular infraction…{but then, I’d probably get busted for run-on sentences and needlessly nested paranthetical remarks (like this)}]? No? Yeah, me neither.)
Rush later (today?), via Wonkette:
I am going to apologize not for saying what I said, but I’m going to apologize if it offended anybody. I never apologize for what I say, but if some of you were offended by a graphic term involving actions committed by BILL CLINTON and MONICA LEWINSKY that have now spread to AMERICA’s high schools, I apologize. I meant to say ‘oral sex’ throughout, but the guttural term escaped my pouty lips in a moment of pure, unbridled passion. The staff was so stunned and so scared today they didn’t dare hit the delete button, the deedle button, and so it got out there…
Because, apparently, no teenager ever hit upon the idea of getting or giving a blowjob until Clinton introduced the idea to the world.
“Heavy Weather” by Caia from the album Isola D’Amore (2003, 5:06).
This really shouldn’t surprise me, but Google’s just-announced 1 has continued their tradition of being Mac-unfriendly at launch.
At this point, they don’t even provide a backup web-upload option — just the Windows-only uploader application. Pity, that, as Ourmedia.org seems to be going through some growing pains (I uploaded a video three days ago, and it’s yet to actually appear in a useable form on the site), and I’m looking forward to being able to host some of my more bandwidth-intensive experiments on servers more powerful than mine.
Still, I’ll hope that this is just a temporary thing, and as with Gmail and Google Maps, Safari/Mac OS X support will come along before too long. In the meantime, though, I’ll just have to keep poking along as I have been until now.
Update: As of May 18th, they now support Mac (and *nix) uploading thanks to a Java-based uploader.
“Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes from the album Violent Femmes (1982, 2:24).
Here’s an interesting little web toy: feedmap.net. Give it your weblog address and (if necessary) physical address, and it returns a map of other weblogs close to you in the real world.
Apparently there’s about 154 other webloggers close to me though it seems to be a fairly loose definition of “close” — the map radius extends from Bremerton to past Sammamish east to west, and Woodinville to Renton north to south. Not terribly surprising, given how tech-centric Seattle tends to be, but fun to know.
Time to start clicking around to find out who all my neighbors are!
Over the past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of playing host to Kirsten, as she spends a couple days in Seattle in the midst of her vacation. She came into town on Sunday, just in time to kick back and relax here for a while before heading out to drop by Fetish Night at the Vogue, and takes off tomorrow morning for her first-ever visit to a foreign country.
She’ll be venturing into the wild, uncharted northern wilderness of Canadia Canuckistan Canada.
Okay, so it’s not the world’s most exotic destination — still, one has to start somewhere, right?
Much fun has been had (including an oh-so-wrong discussion of the alternate uses for Spam jelly), I managed to weasel out a little bit more information about her impending marriage (yay Kirsten!), and it’s been a good few days. She’ll be back briefly this coming weekend too, before heading back to Anchorage, though that will just be a quick overnighter from late Saturday until early Sunday.
Hooray for visits from friends. :)
“Tower of Naphtali, The” by Bolland, CJ from the album Electronic Highway (1995, 7:17).
