Wedding rings

Ready …

Proposition 22 in California has long been something that has interested me.  The whole issue of same-sex marriage just baffles the eff out of me because as a nation with a fifty-four percent divorce rate, I'm gonna have to say that we aren't allowed to make laws or rules regarding something we can't seem to master.  It really would be like Shaq running a workshop about shooting free throws - let's just say he wouldn't be your top contender for a teaching spot.  At any rate, who are we to be making laws binding what a socially constructed term like marriage means anyway?  I absolutely concur with those who are making statements saying that we're going to look back on this in twenty years and say, "Ohmygod, what were we thinking?  So arbitrary ..."  Classic example of history repeating itself in different forms.  Can anyone say interracial marriage bans?  Suffice it to say I'm a big fan of Cali's high courts, at the moment, for having the sense and courage to overturn the ban on gay marriage.  I think this is such a big step because, for me, this type of ban has always been an apparent act of discrimination and the Constitution is supposed to act as a vehicle for supporting and upholding freedoms.  Further, I cannot for the life of me figure out how in the hell my friend Victor marrying a man affects mid-America.  Get over it.

Next.

I'm in love with the fact that the mom from Missouri who used MySpace to get back at a thirteen-year-old girl for

Bad boys bad boys

And finally ..

Brit Brit and Mel Gibson are vacationing together .. who knew?

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Book, magazine, catalog, nutritional information, billboard, website, newspaper... What are you currently reading and would you recommend it to others?

Questions regarding what I am currently reading are seriously my favorite questions.  I just met someone a little over a week ago and we haven't had the chance to actually go out on "the first date" (Saturday ..), but we've been chatting on the phone quite a bit.  Now, he isn't the nerd I am by a long shot - in fact, he's kind of not an academic type at all - but he asked this question and I actually began to think about our babies.  For three seconds. 

Anyway, right now I'm addicted to the news (politics), and since I don't have television access except for at the bar when I'm working, I'm reading literally every well-known, reputable news site out there:  Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, etc.  Book-wise, it's unfortunately quite a cluster: 

Atonement

What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Dover Thrift Editions)

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I will weekend update sometime, but I'm still trying to wake up.  In the mean time, this article makes me absolutely sick from disgust.  It really is just like well-off white women (slash people) to be all, "Ohhhhhhhh I was ghetto once."  She's talking about how she wanted to "give [poor gangbangers and drug users] a voice", but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the way to do this probably isn't by fabricating a memoir.  Hilarious, though, that her sister was the one who called her out on it - nothing like family, eh?

Update: I seriously cannot get over this article, meaning I've had to gchat it up with friends in order to dsplay my disgust.  Word:

Surrrriously

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I love this.

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Unbelievable:

Wigan man lived under the floor

By Charles Graham

Many a column inch has been filled with the story of canoeist John Darwin this last fortnight - but his vanishing trick pales in comparison to that of a Wigan man who hit the national headlines 25 years ago.

Norman Green spent an incredible seven-and-a-half years hidden from view in his own Ince home, often seeking refuge under the floorboards.
Back in 1974, the then 36-year-old had been arrested and quizzed by police regarding allegations of an alleged offence at the home of an 86-year-old woman.
After questioning he was released.

But he was so frightened about his predicament that, when he returned home to find a police car outside his address in West Street, Higher Ince, two days later, that he went on the run. After shivering in bushes for three days in Ince Park without food or water in the December rain he realised he could not abandon his wife and children.

So he went home in the middle of the night and hid in the shed for a week while spouse Pauline sneaked him cups of tea and sandwiches.
Eventually, he plucked up the courage to go back into the house and hid in a cupboard for three days. With council workmen carrying out renovation work there was a danger of his being discovered there, so he then sought refuge inside the settee after hollowing it out from behind.

During this time police made repeated visits asking where he had gone and one officer even once poked the settee with a stick while Mr Green was inside it.

It was while a resident of the sofa that a longer-term plan formed in the fugitive's mind. He said after his discovery: "I started to make a hole in the floorboards with a penknife.

"There was a gap about 2ft wide between the floorboards and the concrete floor. It was about 6ft long. That was where I lived, without coming out at all for the first two years. I just lay on the concrete floor, never seeing daylight or any other human being but Pauline."

His wife passed him food and drink, but his tomb-like bolthole was beginning to have an adverse effect on his health and his weight plummeted to seven stones. He said it was also terrible lying there listening to his six children playing just inches above him.

After two years he began to emerge when no-one else was around and was confronted in the mirror by a straggly-haired and bearded Robinson Crusoe figure. However, while incarcerated he would wear his wife's old clothes in case any visitors wondered why there were men's clothes around the house.

He began to see the children again, but they were always out of the room when he came out from under the floorboards so they never knew where he was hiding. He was rumbled once – by three-year-old Kristian Coates who saw the Fagin-like Mr Green in the lounge playing with some of his children. But despite telling his family, no-one believed him!

It was only in March 1982 when police responded to a neighbour's tip-off that the game was up.
Mr Green's first words were "Thank God it's over."

He was never prosecuted for the alleged offence for which he had been originally arrested, but the story of his self-imposed imprisonment hit every tabloid front page in the land.

Annnnnnnd his picture:

Courtesy of Wigan Today.

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My final update for a moment:  A link to a buttload of media errors that, oftentimes, are mad funny.

Apparently it's gonna snow soon, so I best be on my way back to mi casa to do important shit like, yknow, fuckin around.  Someone's gotta do it.

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