This might not be a very popular view in "tough on crime" California, but I think the craziest thing that passed in Tuesday's elections was 83. I sincerely hope that there's a piece of the law that I am missing and that somebody will correct me for being wrong, but from what I understand the category of sex offenders includes statutory rapists (the 20 year old who sleeps with his 17 year old girlfriend), consumers of child pornography (guess they should've stuck to "barely legal"), and streakers...all of whom will be forced to wear GPS anklets for life.

The issue to me is not necessarily just that of these people who have been convicted of seemingly minor crimes suffering from this ridiculous punishment, but rather that for some reason, people can't seem to accept that convicts who have done their time should be able to move on with their lives.

It looks like I'm not the only one who's upset: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-offenders9nov09,1,7118169.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

From the South Dakoa abortion ban...



I would like to gently remind California readers that 85 is a clear attack on choice. And, for those who would like to think that it's just "letting the parents know"...it may as well be permission. Why would a parent sign a form of notification if they don't want it happening? And for those who think that there is always a way around it, consider both time constraints and small counties where pro-life judges can not be escaped.

There was a fairly small rally on Saturday. Some photos can be found here.

Saturday event

Should be some nice counterprotesting in San Francisco on Saturday. If you're going to be in the area, please join.

Saturday, October 28
UN plaza
ANSWER counter-demonstrations

more details in the upcoming events section here

more Leo

Because he's so cute....

oh, and no, that's not blood in the first picture.

hardly strictly bluegrass

It's too bad some people left before Bob Weir. They missed him and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings...and, as he said, a 50,000 part harmony to Dire Wolf and Casey Jones. Yup, it was amazing. Too bad for the party poopers. I'm not naming any names.

don't forget to fix your women

This is mainly worth watching for the interview with this nutjob about 5 minutes in.

If your stomach the disgustingness of his words, it is a bit funny to hear these words spoken in a heavy Brooklyn Jewish accent.

It should also be noted that a person who can make Richard Dawkins look like a sweet guy is quite remarkable in their assholery.

oh no...GAY!!!!

I wanted to read up a bit more on the Foley scandal, so I searched google for the latest news on the case. I found this (sarcasm following) very comprehensive, clearly amazing article in the Houston Chroncile.

Is it just me, or is something missing here?

I've been busy with school starting and the holdiays...not much time for the internet. Hopefully everything will get normal soon. And hopefully I can get a picture of Leo (who, by the way, is cuddling on my thigh).

sascha baron cohen is god

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm

If anyone takes Borat seriously...well, that's their problem.

Check out all these progressives!

http://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=172&Itemid=54

But hey guys, make sure to vote Democrat! We wouldn't want the right winning, let's preserve:

death penalty
three strikes
war in Iraq, upcoming war in Iran
war on drugs
ignoring the immigrant population
barring same sex marriages
patriot act

To be fair, the Greens aren't doing much. Tiny steps, but it's hard in a two party system. And I don't think it'll necessarily be the Greens (though European success keeps me from losing all hope) (and truthfully, I don't know that they're the ones I want...) who will bring the real left to the table...but it's the first step in the process, and it needs dedication. And there's no way I could in good conscience vote for a party that doesn't represent the left. A party that's moving more and more to the right every time I hear a speech, a party who's presidential candidates have been calling for more war...

Statistically speaking, my opinion will almost surely change in a few more years. But then again, I've enjoyed defying statistics a few important times.

But, I have more pressing issues. Such as Leo. Looks like I owe one ridiculously adorable little guy a nice cuddle.

Leo

I promised Mark a picture of the little guy, but still no camera to take one with...so here's a video from the girl who gave him to me, from when he was 4-5 weeks old....he's almost nine weeks old now, and only cuter!

financial irresponsibility

Fellow Californians,

Am I the only one who is steamed that the legislature is throwing us a bunch of BOND initiatives?

People always talk about how they support Republicans because they are fiscally responsible (in my experience, these are the people that don't know much about economics beyond sound bites). So why all the bonds?

Bonds often double (or more) the amount of money spent...and put it off so that me and my children can pay for your roads that you couldn't raise taxes for. Here's my all time favorite:

Proposition 1B

Pro-car...real sustainable...so lets pass on the debt for a couple of generations! Let's have our kids pay 38.9 billion for 19 billion dollars to help out the cars that shouldn't be so prevalent when they would use these "improvements."

But what really gets me...the "liberals" who decide how to vote based on the name they see when they get to the polls will vote for "transportion."

Fucking California.

download festival

Another great festival that people have got to go to...

http://www.downloadfestival.com/2006/sflineup.html

Between Beck, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Shins...and Muse ain't bad...$29.50 is a pretty good price.

freedom loving country, eh?

39.2% of the 1,745,712 drug arrests in 2004 were for marijuana possession.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a ridiculous waste of law enforcement?

To begin with, there's the often used arguement for marijuana legalization that alcohol seems to have worse effects than marijuana. In my college town, I can't begin to count the incidences of vandalism fueled by alcohol consumption...from stealing public signs to smashing windows of cars. If the cops are looking for marijuana possession, why aren't they at least equally walking into frat parties and cracking down on underaged drinking? For that matter, why aren't they walking into frat parties in houses with frequent reports of date rape?

But it doesn't matter what you think of marijuana as a drug. The point is, use doesn't tend to affect the public much, so why is so much time (and tax dollars) devoted to cracking down on simple possession? And why are lives ruined (the justice system has a tendency to do so) over something so trivial?

on a COMPLTELY different note

You gotta love QC

existential crisis

followed by:

genetic imperatives

Today started out as usual. Well, the kitten woke me up at 6 in the morning to play, which was cute but not particularly exciting when you were going to sleep till 7:45, and needed every hour of that sleep...but nothing out of the ordinary. Got up, showered, grabbed a breakfast bar for the road, and biked to work.

A few hours into my work day, I walked to the back and heard an NPR reporter talking about 9/11. Which is fairly common, so I thought nothing of it...unitl I heard the words repeated about a dozen times.

And I finally remembered that it's the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

I had forgotten.

Truthfully, it doesn't surprise me all that much. I remembered on that day, my entire class was rattled and wanted to talk about it at every moment. I separated myself from all the talk. I don't quite know why, but it just didn't hold my interest. Sure, it rattled me a tiny bit, but it didn't touch me. I don't quite know why. Of course I was upset for all the lives lost, but no more so than for any other tragedy. Maybe because it happened in New York, a place which I've never even been to...I feel more connected to Israel. I've never felt strongly tied to being american, so that didn't do anything for me. Maybe it's because I'm terrible at internalizing tragic events...sure, when I'm scared of them, I'm stressed to a ridiculous point, but once they've happened...I suppose I just move on. Who knows. Anyway, I wasn't touched by what happened enough for me to feel comfortable about further discussion or introspection about the event. It'd feel fake.

I guess that makes me a pretty bad human. I can't help longing for half the humanity displayed by this

so long and thanks for all the fish

Taking another vacation from the internet this weekend for...

another Green Party plenary. At least this one's in Tahoe, not that horrible Ventura county!

ps

Holy crap who's going?

Elvis Costello. Billy Bragg. The Austin Lounge Lizards. And, for all the deadheads out there, Bob Weir.

still mad at 85...

http://www.ucsf.edu/castd/toolbox/ConfidentialityToolkit.pdf#search=%22california%2C%20confidentiality%2C%20age%22

But abortion is different...not a medical procedure, no, it's a dirty evil thing that should be stopped by the law.

I don't get it...all this could possibly do is increase teen pregnancy and ruin lives.

Why do so many people think that their morals should apply to everybody and be enforced by law? There are things that I personally am not completely comfortable with...truthfully, abortion is one of them...but the law can not be based on individuals feelings. In order to restrict a person's freedom in areas that do not affect others, it seems to me that there had better be a factual/scientific reason. In this case, science tells us that most abortions "kill" something that's about as advanced as the fly that would be mindlessly swatted.

And don't get me started on birth control...pharmacists are allowed to not dispense birth control because they don't like it?!

Until reproductive health is treated with the same acceptance as the rest of health care, America will be home to double standards that prevent us from calling ourselves free.

bloody distortion

Two of my housemates are metalheads. I love them, but man do they need to get some taste. Don't get me wrong, I myself listen to a fair bit of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden...even newer stuff like Metallica and even Isis...but how can that and much grittier variations take over so much of one's repetoire? Distortion is fun...but how could somebody live without the intensity of Comfortably Numb, the warmth of folk rock, the tantalizing movement of Iron & Wine (if you're used to his more passe stuff, get Woman King and listen especially to Evening on the Ground)?

One of them has the nerve to say that rock is even more limited than metal. Just cause we don't have gay wizard music doesn't mean that at least feelings in the different sub-genres aren't wildly different. And then he says that rock doesn't have the complicated intricacies and is too repetitive.

Who the hell cares? It's about what you make of it and how you feel. Some of the most simple riffs and melodies can take you to a place that are just...out of body (and I swear, even though I'm a Green, it's not drugs talking). Even in normal circumstances...it just feels right...the way a good home or a good relationship or a good culinary favorite (garlic bread, anybody?) feels. So take that, technical death metal!

Christ, I just compared relationships to food...great ones to garlic bread. Wow, I wonder what a bad one would be.

Anyway, I get the last laugh. Since I'm moving in first, I get to decorate the place. That means Bob Dylan is in our living room.

"justice"

Note: for the purposes of the internet, I'll probably still be dropped off the face of the planet for a few days.

Spending time in a courtroom is downright depressing. You see people slipping through the cracks as you watch. Black man after black man after black man...sure, the numbers might indicate that poverty is more widespread among minorities, and crime is more widespread among the impovershed...but that sort of disproportionality really makes me wonder. Public defenders who probably get too many cases to remember a single client's face mumbling with indifference, the judge looking at a stack of papers for a few minutes before making a decision and moving on...and what's this all for? Justice, apparently. It seems to only hurt. It also angers me that rapes occur every day, and where are the cops? Looking to see if they can find drug users and dealers.

Too much was running through my head, and I still haven't sorted it all out.

On a completely unrelated note...do males ever learn tact? Is it just something that seems absent in the early years, or is it (as I am suspecting more and more) something that is never learned? A couple of friends of mine recently broke up because one moved accross the country for college. He managed to move on, I guess, because within a week he found a new girl. Sure, it seems odd too me, and the girl is still upset and nowhere near moving on...but I can't really fault him for it, and anyway it wasn't like he was actively looking for anything. What can I fault him for, though? He broke the news by saying "I found someone to replace you."

Teenage boys...at least we can laugh at them.

not written under the influence

I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, and at some point thought of the book survey, and realized that perhaps I'm not reading enough contemporary novels. I did just recently read Everything is Illuminated, but still...not very much. Yet I still feel that I need to firm my base in the classics...this is the first time I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird (I'm in college), and I still haven't read Catcher in the Rye...I'd like to read more Dostoyevsky...and anyway, Naked Lunch put me off contemporary writing. I mean, just because you're on acid and a half million other drugs doesn't mean that you have the right to publish nonsensical garbage. I swear, 99% of people who bought that book bought it to look intelligent. Now that I think about it, some of the shittiest stuff I've read has been written under the influence...sure, many greats in writing (the beatniks), music (duh) and the rest of the arts have been on drugs, but for a good majority of people, they just make them stupid. And then they think their works are so great...man did I get sick reading poems and listening to songs by my stoner friends with egos too large for what they were producing.

The lesson here is...I have a lot of reading to do! And unfortunately, somewhere in there I have to waste my time reading Lord of the Rings because I promised a kid I would...though, she doesn't seem to be keeping to her word about reading an actual work of literature. I think I'll put it off.