Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Gay marriage

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“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

Today’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional

I don’t remember the first time I heard about the concept of gay marriage. As I recall, dimly, through the mists of my memory, it was something Andrew Sullivan proposed. Or maybe he was just the first well-known proponent with a large megaphone to speak through. Or maybe I’m wrong entirely, I don’t know.

I do remember thinking: Gays getting married? Wow, that sounds kind of weird. Then, about 30 seconds later, my attitude was pretty much at Yeah, whatever.

And that was before I realized all of the social and legal benefits that go along with legal marriage. I know, I know, I’m slow sometimes and need some things pointed out to me. When you’ve always had a privilege, you don’t think much about what it must be like to not have it and sometimes you need things explained to you from different viewpoints. Everything I take for granted as a result of my marriage, other people — who are just like me in every way, except the gender of their partner — do not get to have.

That is ridiculous.

That is wrong.

We, as a society, have to be better than that. We have to have higher aims.

I’ve never heard an argument against gay marriage that didn’t boil down to: my religion says it’s wrong, or the whole idea makes me feel icky so I want it go away.

These are bad arguments. There’s no two ways around it: if you’re against gay marriage, you want to take rights away from other people for no better reason than you think they shouldn’t have them.

Here is an accurate distillation of my feelings about social progress:

You know our motto here at Kung Fu Monkey: Everybody who wants to live in the 21st Century, stand over here. Everybody who wants to live in the 1800’s stand over there. Thanks. Good luck with that.

John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey, “Prop 8 Overturned” (2010 edition)

 

 

Sometimes

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I had my day planned out: I would write until 1, then go to the gym, then go get the kids.

The day started a little weird: I went to Starbucks, which was packed. The giant handicapped table near the power outlets had one guy at it. So I said, “Can I sit here?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, and he moved his stuff out of the way so I would have more space.

I put my coffee down and started unpacking my things to get working.

“What kind of coffee did you order?” he asked, pulling my cup of coffee away.

“What?” I said. I reached for my coffee.

“What did you order? I need to get you another one. I wasn’t paying attention and I drank your coffee.”

To the best of my knowledge, since I began hanging out in cafes in 1986, that’s the first time that’s ever happened.

“Grande Americano, no room,” I said.

A few minutes later he came back with my new coffee (undrunk, I hoped) and a table nearby opened up, so I moved to it.

And then no writing occurred.

(Shortly thereafter, an actual handicapped person came in and asked if they could have that table, so that guy ended up moving to the table next to mine.)

How could that be? On Sunday, when I’d had some writing time, I’d written lots. I’d left myself a cliffhanger. I knew what the next scene had to be.

Nothing happened. I wrote one sentence, practically hacking the words out of stone. The next sentence was hiding, somewhere, afraid to come out.

Oh no.

At 12:30 I finally decided I would go to the gym, work out, get the blood flowing… I checked my phone.

Four calls from Sophia. I hadn’t heard my phone once. Stupid Starbucks music system.

She wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home. So instead of going to the gym, I went to the school, picked her up, took her home. She went upstairs to lie down. I opened my computer.

Couldn’t write.

Tried playing Tropico 3.

Hated every scenario I tried.

Read a friend’s story to send some feedback. Thought perhaps this might not be the best day for that, because nothing else seemed to be happening. Sent it anyhow.

Sophia came down an hour later to get some lunch.

One of Darin’s great gifts (or strengths, or abilities, or whatever) is that he can concentrate through anything. I can’t. I know I should work on that. But if one of the kids is home, around for any reason, only half of my concentration is present. (And it hadn’t exactly shown up earlier in the day, anyhow.)

I finally called it a day at about 3:30 or 4. I played some Civilization IV. The civ I built annoyed me and I quit the game.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get started.

 

Random and sundry

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In no particular order:

  • Super what? No, I’m not going to be all self-congratulatory. I hate it when people are all “Modern culture’s got nothin’ on me, man.” I honestly have zero interest in professional football and it really wouldn’t occur to me to spend 4 hours watching a commercial fest interspersed with bits of a football game. I used to watch baseball, but that ended in 1993.
  • I ran on Thursday. I ran this morning. I didn’t run far, but given that I think I may have run twice in all of January, I’m feeling pretty good about it. You don’t have to plan out your exercise regime for the rest of your life. Just for today.
  • I’m starting BJ Fogg’s Tiny Little Habits program tomorrow. When he sent out the materials on how it works, I said, “Ohhhh.” Yeah, duh. Anyhow, I picked a few things to work on. I’ll report back later this week as to the program’s effectiveness.
  • Man, if you want to get a lot of hits on your blog, just talk about ebooks versus physical books. Also: the curly hair method.
  • I drove to Union Square yesterday to have lunch with a friend. Getting into San Francisco is a pain in the ass. Getting out of San Francisco requires wiliness and stealth and maybe rocket launchers. If you’re leaving from Union Square garage, what in the best way to get out of the city? It took me about 25 minutes to get to the freeway on-ramp on 4th Street and I was a nervous wreck by the time I got there.
  • Turns out everyone else in town decided this Starbucks was a good place to spend time during the game as well.
  • This Nissan travel mug is basically the greatest travel mug ever.
  • I didn’t have my phone with me today. It’s amazing how naked and out of touch I feel now without it. My phone, my self.