Vibrating!!! Eric Coleman asked me to marry him last night. He announced to the filk circle that he had a new song that he was only going to perform once, and he asked me to hold his lyric book. I did so, and he sang me a song. And there I was, holding his book, face to face with this man as he sang out his wish to spend his days with me, and when the song was done, I set the book aside and damn near knocked him over with a hug. Pictures exist of the look on my face when he was singing to me, because apparently I was a sight to see. I believe I was referred to as 'leaf quivering.' Yup, that's about the size of it.
So yeah, Cap was good.... but more about Cap in detail.
This was my first anniversary of meeting Raven, so we got to spend a bit of time together. Not nearly as much as I would like and we'll be doing something about that this week, but yeah. Happy making. His birthday party went pretty well, a quiet affair with people who care about him, uincluding the nutjobs who are in his band, Toyboat. He's very dear to me, and Cap marks a fun and special time.
Got to hear a bunchy of awesome music, and I also learned somethign very important. I CAN in fact handle on the ground con issues with style and flare. We needed volunteers, I rustled them up as fast as I could and got just enough to handle the problem we had and make it snazzy. We (Duck) had a decent party, and it all looked good in the end. I got flyers top hand out at the area cons, and I got so many wonderful hugs. Xap ran a helluva Cafe, and I got up on stage with Eric and a sparkly new friend, Andy, on fiddle and mandolin. Oooooh, so muc WIN. I think he's going to end up being a long-running Guest Villian just because this needs to happen more often. Oh my WOW.
Jan Magic has officially impressed me. For the record. Not because of her healing abilities, but because of who she is and how she gets things done. I'm a fan. Officially.
I look forward now to MarsCon, where Raven and I will be bussing the 8 hours up to Minneaplois, filled with shiny bits like a Charles and a Celia and a wonderful con I've never been to before.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Jan 12th: Freedom of speech has NEVER meant freedom from consequences
Ok, so I’ve been a lurking a bit recently given the nature of my busy life, and especially given all the insane public events of late. However, as things have finally started to concertize, I find myself needing to get out a couple things regarding the recent shooting in my home town.
That’s right, I was born in Tucson. St. Joseph’s hospital to be precise, a place that accepted some of the shooting victims from last Saturday. I heard about this and immediately started gathering facts. News groups across the internet were conflicting as reports flooded in, and my mind kept running backwards to the many pages and words and actions of violence and violent incitation done by so many in the political spotlight these past few years. It’s as if a floodgate had opened and out poured a wide and colorful spectrum of suddenly acceptable target practice.
A few names spring to mind on the subject. For example: Sarah Palin, a disgusting, gun-toting, violent-minded, dimwit with delusions of grandeur who whores out her own family for the sake of attention; Glen Beck, and undereducated would-be Mormon with a sewage-spewing fear machine for a mouth; Rush Limbaugh, a racist, sexist drug addict who sees fir to piss on anything he chooses day to day and seems to think that by being anything other that white you are filth; Sharron Angle who feels that 2nd amendment solutions are just fine even though we are currently headed by a president who has had double the death threats of any other on record just because he’s brown and then turns around to defend such rhetoric in the face of these events.
I will say that this remarkable trend of using violence as a tool of fear is nothing more than a last stitch effort of a floundering political party that doesn’t know how else to rally their supporters. Frothing, seething, wild-eyed people that don’t really know why they’re angry because they’re only told that they should be angry. They’re lied to about their values being attacked, they’re lied to about children being harmed and they’re jobs being lost. They’re lied to over and over and over by the lying liars that they look to for comfort and answers (see previous list of names, adding others because it’s a LONG damn list). They’re afraid and they’re misinformed, or worse uninformed, and they want to do SOMETHING to try and make it all just go away. And these are the people that those in power would prey upon to do their dirty work, using slogans of reloading and sniper sites on lists of opponents’ names and defending every right anyone ever had to own a weapon simply because they know it’s only a matter of time.
That time came last Saturday. And these profiteering, fear-mongering fucks are ALL to blame.
It has to stop, people. We are supposed to be a country where we can speak freely and live as we wish, not live in fear of some maniac with a gun and a mission from a political mouthpiece. Anyone who uses violence as a political platform doesn’t deserve that platform, and politics doesn’t need them.
Yet there is a part of me that burns at this in a different way. I've been around guns my whole life. gun safety has been drilled into me ever since I was old enough to identify what I was looking at as an object. My father taught me well, and gave me both his great shot and his appreciation for the magnitude of what I was doing. We are a family of hunters, law-enforcement, and farmers. Yet deep down, this kind of thing makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong simply because I'm not viciously anti-gun. I know they're dangerous. I know they're weapons used for exactly one thing. I also know that not every hand that holds them wields them against innocent people. Does that make me wrong somehow? No. But I cannot say that I want every gun ever melted down, either. After what happened Saturday in my home town, that thought burns.
And do not even GET me started on those useless Westboro fucks trying to picket the funeral of a 9-year-old. They changed their mind at the last minute of course and decided to go beat on a Judge’s family instead, but these people are no church. They are the extended family of one man in Kansas who fancies himself important. He’s not. THEY are not. they are disgusting, misguided and need very serious mental evaluation.
That’s right, I was born in Tucson. St. Joseph’s hospital to be precise, a place that accepted some of the shooting victims from last Saturday. I heard about this and immediately started gathering facts. News groups across the internet were conflicting as reports flooded in, and my mind kept running backwards to the many pages and words and actions of violence and violent incitation done by so many in the political spotlight these past few years. It’s as if a floodgate had opened and out poured a wide and colorful spectrum of suddenly acceptable target practice.
A few names spring to mind on the subject. For example: Sarah Palin, a disgusting, gun-toting, violent-minded, dimwit with delusions of grandeur who whores out her own family for the sake of attention; Glen Beck, and undereducated would-be Mormon with a sewage-spewing fear machine for a mouth; Rush Limbaugh, a racist, sexist drug addict who sees fir to piss on anything he chooses day to day and seems to think that by being anything other that white you are filth; Sharron Angle who feels that 2nd amendment solutions are just fine even though we are currently headed by a president who has had double the death threats of any other on record just because he’s brown and then turns around to defend such rhetoric in the face of these events.
I will say that this remarkable trend of using violence as a tool of fear is nothing more than a last stitch effort of a floundering political party that doesn’t know how else to rally their supporters. Frothing, seething, wild-eyed people that don’t really know why they’re angry because they’re only told that they should be angry. They’re lied to about their values being attacked, they’re lied to about children being harmed and they’re jobs being lost. They’re lied to over and over and over by the lying liars that they look to for comfort and answers (see previous list of names, adding others because it’s a LONG damn list). They’re afraid and they’re misinformed, or worse uninformed, and they want to do SOMETHING to try and make it all just go away. And these are the people that those in power would prey upon to do their dirty work, using slogans of reloading and sniper sites on lists of opponents’ names and defending every right anyone ever had to own a weapon simply because they know it’s only a matter of time.
That time came last Saturday. And these profiteering, fear-mongering fucks are ALL to blame.
It has to stop, people. We are supposed to be a country where we can speak freely and live as we wish, not live in fear of some maniac with a gun and a mission from a political mouthpiece. Anyone who uses violence as a political platform doesn’t deserve that platform, and politics doesn’t need them.
Yet there is a part of me that burns at this in a different way. I've been around guns my whole life. gun safety has been drilled into me ever since I was old enough to identify what I was looking at as an object. My father taught me well, and gave me both his great shot and his appreciation for the magnitude of what I was doing. We are a family of hunters, law-enforcement, and farmers. Yet deep down, this kind of thing makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong simply because I'm not viciously anti-gun. I know they're dangerous. I know they're weapons used for exactly one thing. I also know that not every hand that holds them wields them against innocent people. Does that make me wrong somehow? No. But I cannot say that I want every gun ever melted down, either. After what happened Saturday in my home town, that thought burns.
And do not even GET me started on those useless Westboro fucks trying to picket the funeral of a 9-year-old. They changed their mind at the last minute of course and decided to go beat on a Judge’s family instead, but these people are no church. They are the extended family of one man in Kansas who fancies himself important. He’s not. THEY are not. they are disgusting, misguided and need very serious mental evaluation.
Rape: the Definition STAYS
I’m so incredibly disgusted. In case you hadn’t heard, the GOP has been trying to rewrite exactly what does and does not constitute rape. Specifically, they have been trying to say that rape is only when bruises and broken bones are present instead of the sane reasoning of a lack of consent.
Look, people, the entire reason that rape is defined as such it to PROTECT WOMEN. It is meant to protect women from being exploited and attacked without consequence. And now the GOP wants to not only try and take away those protections, they want to then use those changes just to reduce abortion funding: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/abortion-forcible-rape-language-hr-3_n_820846.html?ref=fb&src=sp
I’m vibrating right now. I barely have words for the level of rage running through me right now. I cannot fathom what kind of slime it takes to do something like this, but then I found out. It turns out that even after a huge public outcry and a whole lot of bullshit being flung by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the bill STILL HAS THE SAME LANGUAGE ABOUT FORCIBLE RAPE.
So apparently, these guys have absolutely no interest in what the public wants. They are not their to represent the people as they swore to but their own interests. So why is it that these men keep their jobs while trying so hard to exploit some of the very voters that got them elected, ie women? And why are these women even supporting these fucks?
A very dear friend of mine, Sarah, used to be a councilor. She worked with the response unit that dealt with rape victims just outside of Chicago in Will County. She saw just about every kind of human abomination you can think of and a few you can’t. Trust me, I couldn’t either. the stories she came back with made me physically sick. And she not only saw them, she had to help get these women through these atrocities, right down to helping them cope with having to relive these horrific moments in court to ensure these fucks went to prison for as long as possible.
I would like someone like Sarah to take Rep. Chris Smith for a day. I would like him to see exactly what rape truly looks like, and why it is so important that these monsters get put behind bars for life and that these women get protected, not left in the dust. This isn’t about abortion, not really. This is about a specific section of people getting the shaft to further the agendas of the rich and powerful.
Not happening. NO VERY NOT HAPPENING.
Look, people, the entire reason that rape is defined as such it to PROTECT WOMEN. It is meant to protect women from being exploited and attacked without consequence. And now the GOP wants to not only try and take away those protections, they want to then use those changes just to reduce abortion funding: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/abortion-forcible-rape-language-hr-3_n_820846.html?ref=fb&src=sp
I’m vibrating right now. I barely have words for the level of rage running through me right now. I cannot fathom what kind of slime it takes to do something like this, but then I found out. It turns out that even after a huge public outcry and a whole lot of bullshit being flung by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the bill STILL HAS THE SAME LANGUAGE ABOUT FORCIBLE RAPE.
So apparently, these guys have absolutely no interest in what the public wants. They are not their to represent the people as they swore to but their own interests. So why is it that these men keep their jobs while trying so hard to exploit some of the very voters that got them elected, ie women? And why are these women even supporting these fucks?
A very dear friend of mine, Sarah, used to be a councilor. She worked with the response unit that dealt with rape victims just outside of Chicago in Will County. She saw just about every kind of human abomination you can think of and a few you can’t. Trust me, I couldn’t either. the stories she came back with made me physically sick. And she not only saw them, she had to help get these women through these atrocities, right down to helping them cope with having to relive these horrific moments in court to ensure these fucks went to prison for as long as possible.
I would like someone like Sarah to take Rep. Chris Smith for a day. I would like him to see exactly what rape truly looks like, and why it is so important that these monsters get put behind bars for life and that these women get protected, not left in the dust. This isn’t about abortion, not really. This is about a specific section of people getting the shaft to further the agendas of the rich and powerful.
Not happening. NO VERY NOT HAPPENING.
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