The Republic of T.

Sick as a dog. No strength to blog.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but it’s something a core belief of mine: Freedom and liberty are meaningless concepts without two things—knowledge of them and the ability to act on them. To my mind, the former is basically education, and the latter means health care. I’ve come to believe that a country that can’t provide those two basic things to its citizens can’t have more than a tenuous grasp on the two concepts above.

I’ve wanted to write about health care for some time, but until recently hadn’t taken the opportunity. I ventured down that road with an earlier post. Now I have a post up on the blog at the day-job, about a health care plan the organization is promoting, that would—if everything adds up as it’s supposed to—guarantee coverage to almost every American.

Given what I said about that core belief of mine, the idea of universal or near-universal health care is something I’m passionate about for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that believe it’s criminal that—in a country as wealthy as ours—there are millions of children without health insurance. But lately I’ve become passionate about for another reason, and one raises a question for me.

Is health care a gay issue? I don’t know that it’s a priority for any of our political organizations, but I’m starting to believe that it should be.

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I like to think of myself as a nice guy. I hold doors open for people, even for other guys. I actually feel bad if I forget or accidentally let go of a door and it closes on somebody. If someone opens a door for me on my way into the office or somewhere else, I usually hold the next door open for them. It’s what I do.

I agonize about whether to give up my seat on the bus or the train. If the person standing is elderly, handicapped, infirm, carrying packages, traveling with a small child, or with child, I stand up and offer my seat. (Note: I finally decided not to make that decision based on gender but on factors, with the exception of pregnancy, that can apply to men and women.)

Sometimes they happy accept the offer and take the seat. Sometimes they decline, saying they are getting off after one or two stops. Then I usually ask one more time (”Are you sure?”), and if they decline again then I go back to whatever I was reading, satisfied that I at least made the offer.

Now, apparently, I need to memorize Ken Hutcherson’s face, because Ken Hutcherson will kill me if I open a door for him. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, this post is not what you think it’s about. (Though I could write style-crampin’ aspects of having an infant who doesn’t sleep through the night yet. Suffice it to say that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.) No, it’s about the French.

Or rather, it’s about what they French have done now. It’s something that would never be done here. At least not without a whole lot of whooping and hollering. Forget Maplethorpe for a minute. Can you imagine the public reaction if an American museum featured a new exhibit that’s basically a children’s guide to sex?
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Let’s return to our metaphorical street corner from the previous post, because to understand the current economic crisis it might help to consider how many have been run down at that economic intersection, as conservatism stands by and watches. There’s another lending crisis that’s gone on for a while now, making far fewer headlines than the subprime crisis, the credit crunch, or the housing slump—because of the people it affected. But as those crises intensify and affect more and more people, this one may become even bigger news than it has been so far.

Back in December 2006, when the subprime crisis was just getting started, The New York Times ran a story about short-term “payday” loans and their devastating impact on the poor, who get caught in a never ending cycle of debt.

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Unfortunately, PZ, this kind of thing—from this administration—is all to believable.

Every year, overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS, hepatitis or homicide.

And the number of overdoses has gone up dramatically over the past decade.

But now, public health workers from New York to Los Angeles, North Carolina to New Mexico, are preventing thousands of deaths by giving $9.50 rescue kits to drug users. The kits turn drug users into first responders by giving them the tools to save a life.

Sounds good so far, right? After all, before you can get someone into recovery or treatment, you’ve got to keep them alive. I’ve never yet heard of a dead junkie graduating from rehab. So fewer overdoses is a good thing, even if it’s only the first step towards maybe getting some people the help they need.

You’d think so. Right? Well, if you do, you’re likely not a part of the Bush administration. Keep reading.
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Consider this scenario. You’re standing at a busy street corner when you see someone about to step off the curb right into the path of an oncoming bus. You have just enough time and you’re close enough to reach out and stop them before it’s too late. Do you? Conservatism says, no.

Now consider this scenario. You’re standing at a busy street corner when you see someone about to step in front of a speeding bus. Someone else beside you is about to reach out and stop the other person from becoming roadkill. Even if you don’t attempt to stop the person from stepping in front of the bus, would you actually stop the would-be rescuer from stopping them? Even if the driver was deliberately aiming for the would-be victim? Conservatism says, yes.

Conservatism apparently holds that some people should end up under the bus, or at the very least no one should try to keep them from ending up there.

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Does anyone else grind their teeth at night? How about during the day?

It started sometime last year, around the end of the summer, but I didn’t notice it until September. I’d started waking up with inexplicable headaches that didn’t dissipate during the day. I’d take pain medications, sinus medications, thinking one or the other would fix it.

Then I realized that not only did I have a headache, but my face hurt too, especially my cheeks and my jaw muscles. I realized I was probably clenching or grinding my teeth at night, something called bruxism.

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I can count on one hand the times that an Oscar win caused me to jump up and down in the middle of my living room, out of excitement. And there are even fewer that have brought a tear to my eye. Tonight was one of them, when Freeheld won for Best Documentary Short Subject. (I only hope the reason the server was down when I wrote this is because so many people were visiting it as a result of the Oscar win.

When I first read the story of Laurel Hester, and her dual battles against cancer and discrimination, I blogged it, and blogged it, and blogged it, because I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure her story was told. So did so many others. I only hope this win will mean that more people will hear this story, and more people will ask themselves whether stories like this one ought to happen. And if the answer is no, I hope they ask themselves what they’re going to do about it.

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It’s almost Oscar time again. I have to admit, when Oscar night rolls around again, it makes me nostalgic for some aspects of my pre-parenting life. (Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t take anything in the world for stuff like Parker handing me a birthday card me made himself yesterday, or playing on the floor with Dylan and hearing him laugh.) Time was, by the time the awards rolled around, I would usually have seem most or all of the nominated performances and films. If I went to an Oscar party and joined the Oscar pool, I’d make a decent score and even win on occasion.

Now, if I’ve seen one or two nominated films or performances, I count myself lucky. That’s because getting to a movie nowadays requires slightly less planning than the Normandy invasion. Maybe more. If it isn’t available on Netflix, chances are I won’t see it.

But I have seen lots of movies over the years. And after seeing this list of the 10 best Oscar Best Pictures of all time, I thought it might be fun to compile a list of my own.
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That I turned 19. I’m celebrating the anniversary of that birthday. Do the math and you’ll figure out that today I inch ever closer to aging out of yet another demographic. No special plans today, other than doing some writing, treating myself to lunch, and maybe getting to bed early and squeezing in a little extra sleep.

I did fire up the iPod on the way to work today and try to find something that spoke to where I find myself on this, my thirty-ninth, birthday.

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I’m sometimes amazed at the search queries that lead people to this blog. I don’t know that this will do anything for my Google ranking, but apparently this blog is among the top results if you Google “gay vegetarian mac user.”

Hey, I’ll take what I can get.

I didn’t mean to go off, really. But I had just had enough. It was one of those moments when you mutter to yourself, “That’s all I can stand. I can’t stand no more.”

We were out grocery shopping yesterday. It’s not unusual for one group or another to have a table set up outside the grocery store. Sometimes it’s the Girl Scouts, selling cookies. Sometimes it’s people raising money for charity. Sometimes It’s people protesting property taxes in Montgomery County (Usually people who don’t have children in public schools, because they’re retired or just don’t have kids. So it doesn’t matter to them that we have some of the best schools in the area, and even in the country.)

Someone was setting up a table when we went in, but I didn’t look to see what it was. We were too busy getting the kids situated and getting into the store. But on the way out I saw this guy sitting at the table, with a sign asking for signatures to repeal a law that would “allow men in women’s restrooms.”

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