Tag: gay marriage

In which I settle on a topic eventually

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

rmzyzrgeominqun2qwga(I’ve used this image before, but I feel like it’s appropriate given yesterday’s events.)

I haven’t written an actual post in a couple of days; everything’s been pictures and links since Tuesday evening.  This isn’t from a lack of stuff to talk about or anything; I have a lot of posts on the back burner but I don’t particularly want to write any of them specifically right now.  I haven’t heard anything, positive or negative, about any of the interviews I’ve had; if I haven’t heard back from District Four by Tuesday of next week I’ll assume they don’t want me.  I’ve been getting a fair amount of fiction done although the deadline for the Baen contest is seriously breathing down my damn neck and I don’t have anything I like for it yet.  Again, I have like four different working ideas for it, but none of them have forced their way out onto a screen yet, especially with BA 8 eating up so much of my time.  Hell, one of them is even a BA story.

Actually, hell, I’ve already got the glitter image up; I may as well talk about the gay marriage ruling yesterday.  I had a hazy idea that there was a case pending in federal court somewhere but didn’t know that we were close to getting a decision, so abruptly seeing a Tweet just as I was about to shut down my computer and meet my mother for lunch was an immensely pleasant surprise. (I texted her immediately and told her I needed a few minutes for celebration and to do the Facebook equivalent of yelling “First!” as I posted the information everywhere I knew how to.)

I don’t know that I’ve changed much as a person since getting married; I suspect you’d have to ask my wife about that.  One way that I know I’m different, though, is that I’ve really lost all patience with dudebro humor about what a horrible trap marriage is or comedy that is mostly centered on complaining about wives and significant others.  Lemme make this clear, in small words: Marrying my wife was hands-down, no-doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life.  There is literally nothing more important to me than keeping my marriage strong and my family together.  Nothing.

This means a couple of things to me:

  1. I have no patience whatsoever with people who whine about their spouses/being married.  Let me make sure I’m clear: the word I chose was “whine.”  Plenty of people are trying to save a struggling relationship; that’s not “whining.”  You want to hear whining?  Pull up any comedy station on Pandora and wait a few minutes.  Divorce is legal.  Nobody made you get married.  Fix your relationship, quit your whining, or get the fuck out.  Oh, you have kids?  I don’t care; you’re fucking them up whining about their mother all the time and probably raising your sons to be assholes.  Stop it.
  2. I have less patience with the idea that someone shouldn’t be able to marry someone else because some third party, unconnected to the two getting married, thinks it’s gross if they rub their bits together.  I’ve dropped friendships with people over this.  It’s horrible evil fucking bullshit and I will not put up with it in my life.  Note that if you attempt to argue with me about this in comments my response will be to ban you and delete your comments on the spot, no discussion.  Whine about tolerance for your evil all you want; you’ll be whining into the void and I won’t hear you.  Enjoy your inevitable historical irrelevance; your heartache amuses me.

So glad my state isn’t part of this anymore.

IN WHICH TODAY HAS JUST GOTTEN WAY BETTER

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Politics2 Comments

GAY MARRIAGE BAN STRUCK DOWN IN INDIANA.  BOOM.

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Parenting fail of the day

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting, Politics, Reading1 Comment

ghwbwedding

True fact:  George H. W. Bush is my favorite Republican president of my lifetime.  Which, I admit, isn’t saying a whole lot, but unlike Ford, Reagan, and Bush II I at least feel like the evil old nut-cutting CIA sumbitch had a little bit of a soul.    (Well, OK, I’ve got nothing against Ford.  But he was only president for a couple of months of my life anyway so I can safely disregard him.)  “George H. W. Bush is witness at gay wedding” means precisely nothing meaningful to anybody who wasn’t at the wedding.  It doesn’t really signal any change in the zeitgeist that wasn’t already happening no matter how much I want it to– Republicans have always been for rights for their people, and some of them– like, say, Satan— are pro gay marriage because there are acknowledged gay people in their family.  This has been true for a while.

I really only posted the picture because I want someone to explain the socks.  There is no way the former President of the United States leaves the house in mismatched socks unless he wants to, and I want to know why. Someone tell me.

Long intro to a very short anecdote, but I think it’s funny anyway:  I had to put the boy in his high chair earlier, and decided before I did so that I would lift him way above my head.  He loves this, like all little kids do.  I’m never doing it again, because this time he chose to take advantage of his added height by kicking me in the chest with both feet.  For which he was nearly dropped on his head.  Which would somehow have been my fault.  I think I have bruises.

Pointless griping time– As anyone who knows me IRL is already aware, I started a stupid little project on January 1 where I decided to keep track of all the books I read for a year.  I’m using Facebook to track everything– in fact, book posts are the only thing that I let stick around on Facebook for more than a couple of days.  I’m also keeping track in a spreadsheet, which you would think would make Facebook irrelevant but it’s not.

You knew I was a data nerd, right?  So of course I have numbers.  I have, as of right now, September 26th, reading my 145th book of the year.  That’s not a typo.  145 books, at an average of 336 pages each.  Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll cross 50,000 pages on the year; I read approximately 175 pages a day.  This does not count comic books (at least four or five a week, sometimes more) or anything online, although it’s included a handful of ebooks.  That’s every day.

I’m not bragging.  I suspect this may qualify as mental illness.

At some point, it became clear that it was within the realm of possibility for me to read 200 books in 2013.  I am, right now, five books off that pace– I’d need to have read 150 by the end of September; there are four days left to read those five books– which is actually possible if I’m careful about what books I choose, but probably won’t happen.

Here’s the problem:  As soon as I realized I could conceivably read 200 books in a year, the list became about reading 200 books in a year, and despite my respectable per-book average, I’m really starting to tilt my reading toward shorter books and rereads that I can get through quickly so that I can get “caught up” to this meaningless goal that only I know about and absolutely no one cares about so that at the end of the year I can brag to no one at all about how I read 200 books a year.  This even though I could easily justify telling people I read 175 books a year without fear of contradiction and without altering my reading habits.  The median number of books read by Americans?  Six.  The average is twelve, but that’s inflated by psychotics like myself.  Either way, right now I’ve squared the number of books the average American read last year and I still have three months left in 2013.  200 is not more impressive than 175; it’s just rounder.

I have a problem.  I have four or five hefty nonfiction books and Gone with the Wind (did you know that book is a thousand goddamn pages long?) on my shelf waiting for me and I’m not reading them because I know I can’t finish them in a day or two.  That’s fucked up, and the fact that I want to do something about it but apparently can’t is weird even for me.