My health has taken an unexpected dive, and I find I do not want to blog about this, for a bloody change. This is partly a desire for privacy, and partly a fear that my (seemingly endless) aging problems are just getting boring. (I mean, you know, they bore ME after awhile too.) And chronic illnesses/injuries are part of aging, most assuredly. As Harry Truman famously said, "The problem with history is that it's just one damn thing after another." Ohhhh, how true that is. And aging is part of history, or IS the process of history, as manifested in each individual.
I am home from work, drinking Kombucha to boost my immune system, wasting time arguing on Feminist Critics, in which I unexpectedly had to defend The Holy Trinity (who'd a thunk it?), downloading purty photos, such as the one above (since I have lots of Flickr space left!), and watching my new fave-rave NeNe on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
The REAL HOUSEWIVES are exactly the women some of the Feminist Critics posters really HATE: unemployed, fluttering about, spending money, madly lunching before storming every boutique in Buckhead, all while chattering entertainingly for the rest of us. I regard them as an exclusive subculture out of a Jacqueline Susann novel, certainly nothing like the majority of housewives in any locality. Which is why people watch the show, after all. But several of the FC crowd seem to believe this type of rich, spoiled, bon-bon eating housewife represents the majority of American wives.
Not hardly. If so, we wouldn't be watching them as if they are an exotic species, would we?
***
My heart's on fire, for Elvira. Also my new profile pic, for now! (Note: I simply could not start a story about Emmy without a kitty picture. This was just not possible to do.)
I realized after writing my Proposition 8 piece yesterday, that I had not been specific enough about why I think gay marriage is a crucial civil right, but simply took that knowledge for granted on the part of the reader. And then, I came upon Zan's entry, below, which brings the issue into sharp relief in a very up-close-and-personal way. At her blog, Butterfly Cauldron, Zan misses her partner, Emmy, and wishes she could stay in the country longer:
(((weeepsss like old hippie grandma)))))
If our immigration laws were decent, if they let citizens sponsor same-sex partners, if we had a visa for people who were looking for work and had willing sponsors, if if if. But we don't. There's no way for people in same-sex relationships to bring their partners into the country legally. And, when Emmy finds work here and gets a work visa, she'll only be able to stay in the country legally as long as her job lasts.
There is a chance, because she is trans and still legally male, that we can get her here on a fiance visa. A chance. But when it comes out that she is trans, it's likely that the visa would be denied. We could just get married and hope for the best, but it's the same situation. The visa would likely be denied, because it is the policy of the US Government to deny transgendered people the right to immigrate on a spousal visa. So, even if we got married legally (which we could in Louisiana, because Louisiana does not legally recognize transgendered people as their true gender until SSR has been preformed), we would still not be allowed to live together full-time in this country.
How is this fair? How is this even the slightest bit right? And it's so very easy to remedy. Legalize same-sex marriage at the federal level. Extend to all couples, regardless of gender, the legal right to marry. Immigration rights, insurance rights, visitation rights, adoption rights, full and complete equality under the law. If the genders of the people marry did not marry, Emmy and I could apply for a fiance visa and be certain it would be granted. We could know that our separation was not only temporary, it had a definate end date. It wouldn't keep me from crying, but it would help me to know when I could hold her again.
This is the reason for marriage, people. Love made possible and given a chance, not impeded and made explicitly difficult at every turn. Souls brought together, not kept apart.
Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Fluor Field at the West End, baseball stadium sign, home of Greenville (SC) Drive baseball team.~*~
Does anyone know why YouTube sometimes says "embedding disabled by request"? Must be a pretty important person's request, I figure.
Also, why does it sometimes say "I'm sorry, this video no longer available" when you try to play certain previously-embedded videos? Obviously they don't care about the bloggers and the highfalutin social commentary we are providing to go with the videos, illuminating the far-out corners of Western Civ. Who is going to look up old 70s hit songs and explain the Freudian meanings, if not your humble bloggers? Harumph.
Anyway... the following video has gone through these permutations... I'd save it for a few days, then poof, it wouldn't play and would have vanished from the YouTube archives as well. It's been very hard to find the song, so I was thrilled to find it today. (I wish I'd had it at Halloween, so I could play it alongside HUMAN FLY.)
This is from waaaay back (1971) when songs were forced by radio censors to use oodles of euphemism. Virtually every line of this song has double, even triple meanings, and you just wonder how they got away with a line like "Evil grows in cracks and holes" without the record getting banned. No doubt, it's because of the presentation, which at first listen, sounds very bubblegum. Gotcha! Critic Kim Cooper writes: "The Partridge Family + The Manson Family = The Poppy Family"... even the name of the band wasn't what it seemed at first. They looked hippie-wholesome as the very dickens... yes, the same wholesome kids who took various strange acidhead detours in the late 60s/early 70s... wholesome, Canadian, fun-and-funky kids gone... well, if not exactly WRONG... then, you know, off. Yes, just off.
Some time later, the author of this song recorded one of the worst pop songs of all time, truly the fate of the damned. (Terry Jacks: Seasons in the Sun) But you know, we don't remember all of those bad Partridge Family songs they tortured us with, do we? No, we remember SEASONS IN THE SUN, it's badness is of a truly legendary nature. It's that touch of Manson that makes it morbid and weird.
And without further ado, WHERE EVIL GROWS - the Poppy Family